I Scarce Can Die (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 5)

by Michael Wallace

  I was not altogether surprised to hear what Thorndyke said, and in view of what happened the past spring, I wonder if my suspicions at the time were justified. I must keep my own counsel and avoid rushing to any conclusion.

  That was the end of the entry for that day, but Gordon saw there was another business card further into the journal. He touched it and looked at Len, who nodded. Gordon opened to that page and continued reading.

  November 27th 1852. Nearly all of Dutchtown was agog today at the news that Benkelman has abandoned work on the former McManus claim, following a shocking discovery this morning. Given the optimism and capital with which he commenced it, this amounts to a rapid and stunning reversal. The project, however, had been dogged by bad luck from the beginning. At the end of September, one of the four men hired for it, Grant, was bitten by a large rattlesnake and died in agony the following day. In the middle of October, another of the men, Queen, had his left leg crushed by a large board being fitted for the sluice. The leg had to be amputated at the knee, and Queen is just now beginning to get around somewhat.

  The heavy rains of two weeks ago caused the sluice to collapse, just as the claim was beginning to be worked properly. Early results were said to be disappointing, and the collapse of the sluice brought a more intensive effort to a halt. The two remaining workers, Myles and Robertson, remained at the site in an attempt to get a new sluice up before the snows arrive.

  This morning, Gilliam, one of Benkelman’s agents, rode to the site with provisions and found both men dead near the campfire, which had gone out. The official word is that they were stabbed, and as the only two witnesses will never give testimony in this world, an air of mystery will forever surround the tragedy. Already, rumors are being heard. Because there was a full moon last night, there has been speculation that one or both the men was struck by an unaccountable fit of madness, leading to a fatal confrontation. Others are saying that the wounds resembled less those of knives than of teeth and claws from a large and vicious animal. A small minority holds to the belief that Myles and Robertson were set upon by brigands, but that theory runs aground on the fact that there was nothing at the camp to steal.

  With this incident following so closely on the previous ones, none but the most desperate of men would agree to work the claim at present, and even then only at a wage ruinous to the employer. Benkelman had little choice but to abandon the project.

  Gordon closed the journal and handed it to Len. Gloria picked up the volume at her side, which looked like the other, only with a red binding, rather than black.

  “One of the mysteries surrounding early Dutchtown was what happened to Dutch Joe,” she said. “He was one of the town’s founders and most prosperous citizens, but a few years later he suddenly left, and the reasons have been lost to time. Until now.”

  She handed the journal to Gordon. A bookmark from a Sacramento bookstore was in the middle, and she nodded when Gordon opened the journal to that page and began to read.

  May 26th 1853. Joseph Benkelman saddled his best horse this morning and rode off to seek his fortune in San Francisco. A crowd of townspeople gathered to send him off and wish him well, but in truth, it was a far smaller group than it would have been a year ago. Benkelman’s nerves have been getting the better of him since the beginning of the year, and some who formerly counted themselves among his friends have been slowly distancing themselves. Since the beginning of April, he has been disposing of his property in Dutchtown, creating a flurry of activity at the bank. Judging from the amounts being withdrawn and deposited, it would appear that the buyers have been getting the better end of the bargain.

  From the people who have remained close to Benkelman, a portrait has emerged of a man steadily being overcome by fear and terror. It is said by many of good character that he will not go near the bridge over Dutch Joe Creek — the bridge where Maria Valdez was hanged — once the afternoon sun has gone behind the mountain. Others report that he has stopped going out after dark altogether because when he walks through town, he imagines hearing footsteps following him — yet when he turns to look, the footsteps cease and there is never anyone to be seen.

  I think of Maria Valdez from time to time, and at dusk tonight, after the bank had closed, I walked to the bridge. No one else was in sight as I reached it, and I began to feel myself oppressed by a fog of emotion — a combination of what, I can hardly say. Perhaps melancholy and apprehension. After a minute, the feeling became so powerful that I left the bridge and started back to my lodgings, and it quickly dissipated. Powerful undercurrents remain from what happened last year, and I suspect they will remain a part of the fabric of Dutchtown for some time to come.

  Gordon closed the journal gently and held it in front of him for a quarter of a minute before handing it back to Gloria.

  “May 26th,” he said. “That was a year to the day after Maria was hanged.”

  Len cracked a hint of a smile. “I figured you’d pick up on that,” he said. “It would appear from this that while Joseph Benkelman may have escaped justice at the hands of the law, he did not escape punishment for his crimes altogether.”

  “I wonder,” Gloria said. “Do you suppose the footsteps followed him to San Francisco?”

  There was a pregnant silence before Peter finally said:

  “Why would they not?”

  THE DINNER PARTY BROKE UP AT 7:45. With Peter heading to his meeting, Gordon decided that karaoke night at the Rope’s End was preferable to an hour and a half of solitude in the vacation rental. He secured the last remaining table for two against the far wall by hanging a jacket over a chair and went up to the bar.

  “Good evening, Reg.”

  “Good evening, Gordon. What’ll it be?”

  One of the early acts was creating a cacophony, and Gordon had to raise his voice to be heard over it.

  “Club soda with a twist, please. Is Carla ‘singing’ tonight?”

  Reg nodded.

  “Then after she performs, her drink’s on me.” Reg set Gordon’s drink on the bar, and Gordon handed him a twenty. “Keep the change.”

  “Much obliged.”

  Gordon returned to his table and sat facing the stage area. The U2 impostors finished their song and departed to desultory applause. He squeezed a few drops of lemon into his soda and dropped the peel in. A murmur was running through the crowd, as if anticipating the next act. Gordon looked at his watch. It was exactly eight o’clock.

  Marilyn Monroe walked onto the stage.

  It wasn’t Marilyn, of course; it was Carla dressed as her, but she had captured Marilyn to the life. She was wearing a strapless Pepto-Bismol pink dress with a slit running up the left leg from the ankle to nearly the waist. A large rhinestone necklace hung around her neck, and two large rhinestone bracelets were on her wrists, over the pink long-sleeved gloves that ran up past her elbow. Gordon hoped they were rhinestones; if not, half the wealth of Dutchtown was on her body. She held an open fan in her right hand and covered her cleavage with it. Slowly and seductively, she folded the fan, stepped off the stage and moved to the tables on Gordon’s side.

  Stopping at the first one, where two men were sitting, she tapped one of the men on the shoulder with a fan.

  “No,” she said, in a high voice that could have been Marilyn’s. She tapped the other man on the shoulder.

  “No,” she said again. She moved to the next table, where a man and woman were sitting, and tapped the man on the shoulder with the fan. His back was to Gordon, but he could see the woman’s face, and he hoped the man was enjoying it more than his companion seemed to be.

  “No,” she said again and moved on to Gordon.

  She tapped him on the shoulder, then swung the fan harder, hitting him on the neck. It stung.

  “No, NO!” she said in a much louder voice. She turned and flounced back to the stage, nodding to Reg. He pushed a button, and the music started.

  It was Marilyn singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” from the movie Gentlem
en Prefer Blondes. It sounded like a bootleg recording, but turned up loud, the energy of the song more than came through. Carla didn’t have a bevy of tuxedo-clad men surrounding her as Marilyn had in the movie, but she moved with a compelling grace and eroticism, always in line with the lyrics. Gordon wondered if she had been studying a video of the movie. When she finished, the house erupted in loud and sustained applause, and Carla took several bows before disappearing behind the partition that separated the stage from a back room.

  Seven minutes later, Carla came back into the room as herself and headed toward Reg. He pointed to Gordon and busied himself fixing a drink. He set a martini glass in front of her, and she carried it to Gordon’s table. There was a half-hour break before the next set of acts, so the noise level had dropped to where conversation was possible.

  “Thanks for the drink,” she said, as she slithered into the chair across from him.

  “Thanks for the show. You were great. What are you having?”

  “Cosmopolitan. I taught Reg how to make them.”

  “Well, cheers.”

  “Cheers. And I hope I didn’t hit you too hard with the fan.”

  “I’ve been hit harder.”

  “Let me see.”

  He turned, facing the wall, so she could get a better look at the left side of his neck.

  “Oh my God. It’s bleeding. Here.” She dipped a cocktail napkin in her drink, leaned across the table and rubbed the spot where she had hit him. He flinched as the alcohol seared into the open wound.

  “I hope you don’t have a jealous girlfriend,” she said.

  “It depends on the day. Why?”

  “Well, it looks for all the world like a hickey, and it’ll probably look even more like one tomorrow.”

  “I’ll start working on my story tonight.”

  She took a sip of her drink.

  “You are going home tomorrow?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “I’d advise you to stay with the plan. Don’t get me wrong; if you moved here, I wouldn’t mind getting to know you a bit better. But you’ve poked a stick in a hornets’ nest by looking into the Baxter murder. Is there any doubt in your mind that’s why Basil Dill was killed?”

  “Not much.”

  “If you stick around, you could be next. The longer you’re here, the bigger the chance you’re taking. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Well, since I am planning on leaving tomorrow, could I ask you a question? Do you think Dill’s murder is connected to the Baxter case?”

  She thought about it for a few seconds. “I can’t see a better explanation,” she finally said.

  “I don’t suppose you know what the sheriff is thinking.”

  “As a matter of fact, I have a pretty good idea. Daphne, the other agent who was in the office on Monday, is married to a sergeant in the sheriff’s department. Given her sales skills, that’s probably a good thing. Anyway, she told me, strictly on the QT, that Ketch will probably make a lot of noise and raise a lot of dust over the next week, then announce that Dill was killed by a professional hit man who is now hundreds of miles away. And then it’ll go straight into the cold-case file.”

  “I guess your sheriff doesn’t have a very good batting average when there’s no drunk husband on the premises to take the rap.”

  “You said that, not me.”

  They drank in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

  “To change the subject,” Gordon finally said, “have you heard the news about Maria?”

  She sat up a little straighter. “No. What?”

  “You remember the story in the paper about Len looking into her lynching?” Carla nodded. “Well, he got a call from someone who had some stuff in the attic that turned out to include some diaries or journals kept by one Ezra Pierce, who worked at the bank in the early days of Dutchtown.”

  “And?”

  Gordon briefly summarized what had been in the journal extracts he’d read over the past two days.

  “It’s not conclusive,” he said, “but Pierce seems to have been a pretty sharp observer, and from what he wrote, it sounds as if he thought she was innocent and was framed by Dutch Joe Benkelman. And that Benkelman subsequently got totally spooked by this town and left it a year later.”

  “I’ve always said Maria was innocent.” She looked straight into Gordon’s eyes. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “I’m pretty sure you have. The first time you came into the office, I had you pegged for a ‘sensitive,’ and that you saw her in the empty house proves the point. I guess in the early days, the town’s biggest brothel was there, and a few people in town get a sense of it, even today.”

  “Sense of it? What do you mean?”

  “Seeing a woman — probably Maria — in the windows. Hearing an out-of-tune piano and crowd noise when there’s nowhere it could be coming from. That sort of thing.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “Don’t I wish. There are only a few who pick up on it, but I’ll tell you something else. I’ve shown that house to probably 60 people by now. And 58 of them just walked through it like it was any other house. But the other two were bothered the minute they got to the front door, and they were ready to leave before they even went through the whole place. They couldn’t put a finger on what was wrong, but at some level, they knew.”

  “Interesting,” Gordon finally said, just to break the silence.

  “So if you’ve been seeing Maria, on top of all the things you’ve been stirring up, it actually might be a good idea for you to leave town now instead of waiting for tomorrow.”

  He looked at her without saying anything.

  “I’ll see that you get a refund for tonight.”

  GORDON PASSED ON THE OFFER and left the Rope’s End at quarter to nine. A customer, parka pulled up over his neck, came in as Gordon went out, and after that, he didn’t see a soul as he walked to the Cherokee. The sliver of crescent moon had already set, and stars blazed in the dark, clear sky above. A light, cold wind had picked up, and fallen leaves skipped across the street in front of and behind him. He got into the Cherokee, and turned the key.

  A whining sound came from under the hood, but nothing happened. He tried twice more, with the same result.

  Gordon possessed a variety of skills, but automotive knowledge was not one of them. He made a point of having a trusted mechanic and belonged to the auto club in case of a breakdown. So far, the approach had worked well for him. Tonight, not so much. He didn’t recall seeing either an auto mechanic or an auto club towing station in Dutchtown and quickly concluded that the most sensible approach would be to leave the car downtown and deal with it in the morning.

  He locked the Cherokee and started walking back to the house.

  There was neither human nor vehicle in the dimly lit street. As he approached the taqueria, now serving its last meals of the night, he thought he saw a dark cat scurry into a space between two buildings up ahead but couldn’t be sure. Wind noise came at him from two places. He could hear it gusting through the trees above, and he could hear its wheeze in the distance, as it blew through the narrow canyon. When he reached the taqueria, the overhead wind noise abruptly stopped, though he could still hear the faint canyon wind in the distance.

  As he grew accustomed to the relative silence, he heard another sound: A footstep behind him, then another — the sound of someone keeping pace with him.

  If he hadn’t heard the story of Benkelman’s footsteps, and if Carla hadn’t just warned him, he most likely would have continued without a second thought. Now, in the empty street, he was more than a little unnerved.

  In the ordinary course of things, he would have turned left on Bellota Street, in front of the taqueria, and walked the short block to Main Street. Instead, he paused a fraction of a second and kept walking down River Street. There was a small parking area behind the taqueria, and he cut into it. At the end of the unlit parking area
was a narrow alley leading to Main Street. It was completely dark, and he plunged into it.

  He could still hear the footsteps behind him, and his sense was that they were drawing closer.

  Gordon put his hand in the right jacket pocket and grasped his small but very bright flashlight. He slid it slowly out of the jacket as he picked up his pace to reach the end of the alley as soon as possible. The instant he reached Main Street, he stopped abruptly, pivoted, and shined the light down the alley.

  It was deserted, and the sound of the footsteps had stopped. He remembered what one of his coaches used to say: Your biggest fears are the ones you imagine yourself. He held the light on the alley for a full minute and didn’t pick up so much as a moth fluttering about.

  He stepped away from the entrance to the alley and looked to his right. The bridge over Dutch Joe Creek was 150 feet ahead, and Main Street was still and silent. He took a deep breath and began walking toward the bridge.

  The footsteps behind him started up again, but as he listened, he thought they sounded different. Before, they had been heavier, almost as if the walker were wearing hard-soled boots. Now, they were lighter, almost the sound of feet in moccasins, and it seemed as if the walker’s stride was a bit shorter. As he drew up to the bridge, he noticed that the coffee can now held a fresh bouquet of flowers.

  He turned rapidly again, and shined the light on the street behind him, playing it slowly side to side. There was no movement and no sound, other than the distant noise of the wind through the canyon.

  Once on the bridge, Gordon could go only forward or backward. So, in the event he was being followed, he stepped backward onto the bridge and began backing across it with the flashlight on and trained where he’d just been. He stepped carefully, remembering that the planks were rough and uneven, and had gotten a third of the way across the bridge when he decided he was only frightening himself. He stopped and waited a full minute. Nothing. Letting out a deep breath, he turned in the direction he was going.