Jack The Roper (Axel Hatchett Mystery Book 6)

by Steven Nelson

  “Let’s get this over with,” said Walter.

  Audra went around to the back of the wagon and reached up on her tippy toes and unfastened the tailgate. She pulled a short ladder out of the hay and invited us to climb on up.

  “Watch your step, folks,” she said. “Don’t want anybody getting hurt.”

  “How could anybody get hurt on a dude ranch?” asked Walter, sourly.

  “Listen,” said Audra, her smile fading a little. “We’ve got a surprise for you. We’re going to stop along the way and do some trout fishing. What do you think of that?”

  “I could have stayed home and gone fishing,” Walter complained. “Are you making us catch our own lunch now?”

  “No,” said Audra, “we’ve got a fine lunch packed for you. But it’d be a great thing if we could add a few trout to the menu. Aren’t any of you excited?”

  “I am,” said Tracy. I figured she was just being nice.

  “I wouldn’t mind outsmarting a few trout,” I said.

  “Outsmart?” asked Walter. “Fish are about as smart as the worms you use for bait.”

  “Not so,” said Audra. “Trout are clever. You’ve got to use see-through fish line so they won’t see it, and you got to bait your hook just right. We use cheese.”

  “Cheese for fish?” asked Betsy. “What kind of cheese?”

  “Velveeta. It works best.”

  “How do you keep it on the hook?” asked Walter.

  “Well,” said Audra, “you got to cover the whole hook with the cheese, and then you dip it in the water to chill it. It stays on the hook better that way. Still, you got to be careful when you cast or that old Velveeta will end up in the bushes.”

  “I haven’t seen any ponds or lakes around here,” said Walter.

  “We’ll be fishing in the stream.”

  “What the hell?” asked Walter. “How can you tell when you’ve got a bite? The bobber will be bobbing all the time in a stream.”

  “We don’t use bobbers,” said Audra. “You’ll be fishing tight line. You just slip your thumb or finger under the line near the reel and when a trout starts nibbling you’ll feel the line jerk. It takes some practice, but you’ll get the knack. Folks, let’s get going.”

  We scaled the ladder and found spots to sit in a whole lot of hay. Audra slid the ladder back up and fastened up the tailgate. She climbed onto the box, and Sheepy whipped up the horses. They took off like a couple of mud turtles. There were picnic baskets in the hay with us. Lunch. We headed up behind the barn, the wagon creaking the whole time, and took the road that led past Primus Roan’s log castle.

  “You working to solve the murders?” Walter asked me.

  “That’s right. Me and Tracy.”

  “How exciting!” said Betsy, her voice like a dirge.

  “What’s for lunch, I wonder?” asked Tracy. She started poking at the picnic baskets.

  “You hungry already?” I asked.

  “A girl detective’s got to keep her strength up.”

  The wagon rolled up the road, Sheepy keeping up a conversation with the horses, and we went past the mansion.

  “Did you meet the guy that owns that place?” Walter asked me. I guessed somebody had let the secret out.

  “Yep,” I said. “Howdy Doody with money. He’s not a bad old geezer.”

  “Owns this whole ranch?” asked Walter.

  “Half the county, I guess. Raises horses. The dude ranch is just a sideline.”

  “Does he have any idea who killed Rumdab and that wrangler?” Walter asked.

  “Never mind the wrangler,” I said. “That’s all solved. Rumdab was the only person who was murdered.”

  “That so?”

  “Ask Sheepy and Audra.”

  I was interested in seeing what they’d say. Walter was sitting near the back of the wagon. He sailor-walked his way to the front, stepping carefully through the hay. When he got to the seat, he hung on to its back and talked to the pair of buckaroos.

  “Hey,” I heard him say, “the detective here says your wrangler wasn’t murdered. Is that so?”

  Sheepy jumped like he’d been struck with his own horse whip. “I guess the cat’s out of the bag. Brice likely killed himself, poor fellow.”

  “It wasn’t the Roper?” asked Walter.

  “Forget about the Roper. That’s all in the past. Brice was all busted up, and stove up, and in a mort of pain. Looks like he strung himself up.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” complained Walter.

  “Took a while to sort things out. We was fixin’ to tell you,” said Sheepy.

  “So the doctor’s the only one who was murdered.”

  “Looks like.”

  “I think Hawk did it,” said Walter.

  “Why Hawk?” asked Sheepy, turning to give Walter a pop-eyed stare. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, son.”

  “No, I’m not. Hawk was making passes at Betsy. She told him to go shove it. Then Rumdab started flirting with my wife. I told him to stop it, and he did. But I think Hawk was jealous. Hawk might have believed Betsy would change her mind about him if the doctor was out of the way.”

  “You’re fishing in a dry creek,” said Sheepy. ”What you’re saying don’t make no sense.”

  Betsy made her clumsy way to the front of the wagon. “You’re just jealous,” she told Walter. “I don’t care about Hawk. He’s all show. If he’d killed the doctor, why would he leave my earring by the body to make it look like I did it?”

  “Don’t talk about that,” Walter warned her, looking over at me and Tracy.

  “That earring was yours, Betsy?” asked Tracy.

  “Yes. I bought those earrings for the trip. And then I lost one of them, yesterday. I didn’t kill the doctor, and I didn’t meet him out in the woods. I think the sheriff thinks I did. Meet him in the woods, I mean.”

  “The earring was a plant,” I said. “Don’t worry, they can’t use it against you. The sheriff knows you’re not the killer. Do you think if someone wrote a love note to Rumdab, and signed your name to it, he’d have gone out in the woods to meet you?”

  “No. He was scared to death of the Roper. I don’t see how anyone could have gotten him to go out after dark.”

  “Maybe he found out about Brice’s death being a suicide before the rest of us did. That would have taken his fear away,” I said.

  “Who would have written the note?” Tracy asked me.

  “It wasn’t me,” said Walter, bridling a bit. “I didn’t want the doc dead. I wasn’t jealous of him, if that’s what you’re thinking. Betsy flirts with all the guys. I don’t know why, but I’ve gotten used to it. I know she wouldn’t fall for a little runt like Rumdab. She likes them tall and broad-shouldered, like Hawk.” He sneered a little and gave Betsy the cold fish eye.

  “OK,” said Tracy. “We’ve got to figure this out. Who around here hated the doctor enough to want him dead? Who hated him enough to kill him?”

  “Maybe someone who was interested in his wife,” I said. “Maybe they wanted the doctor out of the way.”

  “Curt was sweet on her,” said Betsy. “He was all the time looking at her.”

  “Hell, this is getting us nowhere,” I said. “Let’s try something else. Who would hate Betsy enough to try to frame her for a murder? Anybody’s murder.”

  “Hey!” said Walter. “That’s my wife you’re talking about.”

  “I know, but you said yourself that your wife likes to make eyes at every man who comes along. Maybe somebody got jealous.”

  “Then why not kill Betsy?” asked Tracy.

  “You shut up!” said Walter.

  That riled me. “Don’t you go telling my wife to shut up. Maybe the killer was jealous of Betsy but couldn’t figure out a way to get her off by herself so he could kill her. So, he killed Rumdab instead and tried to pin the murder on Betsy.”

  “Or,” said Tracy, “maybe Lilly was jealous of Betsy and hated Dr. Rumdab because she thought he was going to run off w
ith her. Betsy, I mean. So she killed two birds with one stone. She murdered her husband and made it look like Betsy did it.”

  I kind of liked that. Our conversation was interrupted by a desperate Audra.

  “Hey, everybody!” she shouted. “Do you all know the Sierra Sue song? Let’s all sing it!”

  We just stared at her.

  “Well, how about the Redheaded Stranger? I’ll start off and you all join in.”

  13

  Audra started warbling at the top of her lungs and after a while we grudgingly joined in, but you could tell we were still thinking of murder.

  We sang a couple more songs, but they weren’t bloody enough for us. Sheepy pulled the wagon into a meadow with a stream running through it.

  “Folks,” he said, “it looks like we might get rain after all. Let’s stop here for lunch to make sure we can get back to the ranch before we have a belly buster.”

  “A belly buster?” asked Betsy. “What exactly are we having for lunch?”

  “I mean a big rainstorm,” explained Sheepy.

  Audra got down from the wagon seat and came around to open the tailgate and pull down the ladder. We unloaded the picnic baskets, which were full of fried chicken and fixin’s, and spread blankets on the grass and ate. We had our lunch next to a broad and meandering stream with willow growing next to it. I liked the sound of the water as it snaked its way over and around rocks. We kept a weather eye out for the coming rain and kept talking murder. Sheepy and Audra tried to stop us, but who listens to buckaroos?

  “Damn it all!” I finally said. “It looks like every one of us had motive and opportunity. I need a clue if I’m going to solve this case. Something to hang a hat on. What the sheriff and his boy found doesn’t help me any.”

  “That’s all we’ve got,” said Tracy.

  Sheepy fetched the fishing tackle — fiberglass rods equipped with Zebco reels, and nets and creels for all of us. Tracy and me had done plenty of trout fishing, but Audra had to show Walter and Betsy how to bait the hooks.

  “These hooks are too damned small,” complained Walter. “What are we fishing for, minnows?”

  “No,” said Audra, “little brook trout. They’re small, but they’re tasty. You roll them in corn meal and fry them in a skillet. We leave the heads on.”

  “Ugh,” said Betsy. “I don’t like my meals staring back at me.”

  “Sissy Dell will take the heads off yours, Betsy.”

  We arranged ourselves along the stream bank. Tracy and me took the middle. Sheepy and Audra picked a spot upstream about forty feet. Walter and Betsy took a spot downstream. Audra warned us all to keep quiet or we’d scare the fish, but Walter kept griping about the fishing poles. He didn’t like the enclosed reels, or the thin fish line, or the light poles, or much of anything. The guy was in a sour mood.

  We hadn’t had our lines in the water long before Sheepy let out a cowboy yip. I looked over at him. He was standing up and his rod was bent almost double. He reeled in his catch and flipped it onto the bank. It was a good-sized trout to come out of a stream. It might have been a foot long.

  “It’s a whopper!” said Audra.

  “It’s no bigger than a kid’s goldfish,” Walter said.

  Noise carries well around water. I don’t know why that is, but I could hear Audra and Sheepy talking even though they were practically whispering. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop — oh, hell, yes I did — but I heard them talking about Drew.

  “He ain’t a bad sort,” Sheepy told Audra. “Don’t you never get lonesome?”

  “Not that lonesome,” said Audra. “I wish he’d just leave me alone. I don’t encourage him any, believe me.”

  “Give the boy a chance.”

  “Quit matchmaking, Sheepy. Drew gives me the creeps. He says he’s crazy in love with me, but I think he’s just crazy.”

  Downstream from us, Betsy and Walter were talking.

  “You could have been a doctor,” Betsy said.

  “Didn’t work out so well for Rumdab, did it?”

  “That’s your excuse? You’re afraid of being murdered if you do something with your life? I’d like to have children, but we can’t as long as you’re working dead-end jobs. You and your stupid inventions.”

  “I’ll make my fortune someday.”

  “Sure, and I’ll grow horns like a bull. I wish you’d grow up.”

  Upstream, Sheepy let out another yip. He started reeling in a second fish. I got a good look at it while it was flopping on the bank. A nice rainbow, almost as big as Sheepy’s first catch. He worked out the hook and put the fish in his creel.

  “Save some for the rest of us,” I told him.

  “What you using for bait?” hollered Walter. “Something besides this stupid cheese?”

  “I’m using cheese,” said Sheepy. “I just picked the best fishing spot. You got to learn how to read water and talk trout.”

  “Sure,” said Walter. He reeled in his line and the cheese was gone. “Damn! Where’s a worm when I need one?”

  We spent about an hour fishing. Sheepy caught five nice trout. The rest of us caught nothing. Mosquitoes started buzzing around us and thunder was getting loud in the sky.

  “Time for us to get going,” Audra told us, standing up and reeling in her line.

  “Don’t worry, folks,” said Sheepy, “I’ll share my fish with you.” He let out a cackle of a laugh.

  The storm couldn’t be far off. We packed up the remains of our lunch and our fishing gear and headed for the hay wagon. Sheepy and Audra broke out some worn yellow slickers for us, just in case, and we climbed back into the hay. About halfway back to the ranch, the clouds opened up and dumped a load of rain on us. The hay got wet and smelly and we sunk into it like turtles in mud. It was cold and miserable. Sheepy and Audra huddled on the wagon seat and didn’t sing one song.

  “Folks,” Sheepy told us when we were back in front of the grub house, “there’s cards and checkers to play inside. Sissy Dell and Panhandle will fix you all some coffee and hot chocolate. Enjoy your time before supper.”

  We all tramped into the chuck house with our straw-covered shoes and the smell of fresh coffee assaulted us.

  “Want to play a game of checkers?” Walter asked me. “I invented a board game once. Kind of a cross between chess and Monopoly. It was too complicated, I guess.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but me and Tracy are likely headed back to our cabin. I want to think about the murder some more.”

  “And listen to the rain on the roof,” said Tracy.

  We stayed just long enough to drink some coffee and then we went out into the wet to our cabin. The roof had a leak in it and both Eben and Mayhew played with the drips.

  “How are you going to find your clue?” Tracy asked me.

  “As soon as the rain lets up a little, you and me are going to go visit the crime scene. I don’t suppose they’ll want us out there, so we’ll sneak up on the trail. We’ll head straight back from the cabins until we’re out of sight of the ranch buildings. Then we’ll cross over to the trail.”

  “Why don’t we go now?”

  “Now? It’s wet out.”

  “It might get worse. We’ve still got our slickers. You know you want to go.”

  “I’m tired, but you’re right. Let me get my gun and flashlight. I don’t suppose you packed any of those little evidence envelopes I like to carry when I’m working?”

  “Of course I did. I know you.”

  I gathered the stuff I needed and we climbed back into our slickers. Tracy put on her cowgirl hat and I donned my sad fedora. We said goodbye to the cats — they were drinking out of the can we’d put under the drip — and went out to brave the elements.

  We quickly crossed the strip of meadow behind the cabins, our shoes and pant legs collecting a lot of water, and headed into a little wooded area to the right of the trail where Rumdab had taken his fatal hike.

  When we’d walked through the undergrowth beneath the trees for a while, we
turned left and found the trail. We were out of sight of the ranch buildings. We kept our eyes on the trail, hoping to find something that the sheriff and his boy had missed. I’d grabbed an extra flashlight from the truck, so we had two. We found nothing.

  “What are we looking for?” Tracy asked.

  “Anything. The other earring, a love note, a machine gun. Anything at all that doesn’t belong here.”

  The dirt track was still pretty dry under the trees. The hard-packed soil, covered in pine needles in lots of spots, was lousy for showing footprints. After a while, we came to the spot where the doc had been strung up. The cowboys with the badges had roped it off by tying twine to a few saplings and bushes. We ducked under the twine and spent way too much time looking for evidence that might have been missed.

  “Tracy,” I said, “if you’d been the murderer, how would you have gone back to the ranch?”

  “I wouldn’t have taken the trail, that’s for sure. Too easy for somebody to come along and see me. I’d take to the woods. But it was dark. I’d want to stay as close to the trail as I could and still be able to hide in the trees.”

  “Right you are. I’m glad to hear you’d make a good killer.”

  “Something to remember if you start looking at other dames.”

  “Come over here under the tree where the doc was hung. Pretend it’s dark and you’ve only got a flashlight and a weak moon to see by. Show me where you’d leave the trail to take to the woods.”

  She came over and stood by me and squinted her eyes to make things look dim. She was still wearing her glasses. She looked good in them. After a minute, she pointed.

  “There,” she said. “That bare spot. What is it, a dry creek bed?”

  “Looks like.” There was a rocky, twisty, path with very little vegetation except for the trees growing near it. “Why that side of the trail?”

  “It’s the same side that our cabins are on. I wouldn’t want to have to cross the trail again. Somebody might see me. I’d walk down that creek bed a ways and then turn back towards the ranch.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said. “Keep your peepers peeled. We’re looking for anything and everything.”

  Tracy started down the dry gulch and I followed behind her. Some rain pattered on us and the rocks under our feet were slick. Tracy walked about fifty feet and stopped.