A Murderous Yarn

by Monica Ferris

  “How long had you known him?”

  “Years.” When Steffans held his pen ready and looked inquiring, Marvin calculated and said, “Twenty-six, twenty-seven years. Maybe twenty-eight. I worked for him for a while, foreman in the plant.”

  “Why’d you quit?”

  “Got a better offer, which wasn’t difficult. Bill Birmingham hated to pay a man what he was worth. Not a bad boss, a little hard, and tight. Good businessman and better friend. Liked him, liked his kids, liked his wife.”

  “You married?”

  “Twice, once right out of high school, lasted ten months, no kids; then nine years to Alice. Three kids, all girls, all doing fine, turned out nice. ’Course, a lot of that is due to Alice’s second husband, a good man, walked the second two down the aisle when they got married.” Marvin was looking inward, a half-smile on his lips, and half of that was pained.

  Steffans made another note. “Did you murder Bill Birmingham?”

  That directness surprised Marvin; he looked up, mouth half-open, eyes wide. “No,” he said.

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No!” This came out a bit sharply, and he grimaced. “No way I could know that,” he said. “I wasn’t there when it happened.”

  “Where were you?”

  “At home.”

  “Alone?”

  Now he was amused. “Yes, as it happens. I had some friends over the night before and we sat up late, playing poker, shooting the bull, drinking beer. I got up Saturday, but I was feeling so bad I had to call Buddy Anderson, who I was supposed to meet for golf, and beg off. I don’t know if it was the beer or the sandwiches, but I was pretty sick all day Saturday. I stayed home with the TV, so I was there when Char’s son Bro called me late in the afternoon with the news, and asked me to come over. Char was taking it hard, he said, and asking for me.”

  “Were you surprised?”

  “Hell, yes! I thought that when old Bill went, it would be a stroke, him having high blood pressure and all.”

  “No, I mean that Charlotte Birmingham would ask for you.”

  “Oh. No, not at all. I’ve sat up with her and one or another of the children many a time. Been there for the good times, too. Done it so much people are surprised to learn I’m not a member of the family.”

  As she drove behind Jill and Lars around the millpond, Betsy noted small houses of the post–World War II variety, then a wide, grassy field full of motor homes, closed trailers, and antique cars. Jill turned there, and a little farther along were some enormous, modern sheds on one side of the narrow street and on the other an old cemetery. At least some of the enormous sheds were bus barns, their big open doors showing that inside were not city buses, but the luxury kind that are rented to groups making jaunts. Except one of the barns had antique cars inside and in front of it.

  There were more antique cars parked on a sandy verge along the narrow lane.

  Betsy was so busy looking around that she almost failed to notice that Jill, on making another turn, had immediately pulled onto that scrubby verge. She slammed on her brakes as she went past Jill’s car, and pulled in at the far end of the row, beside a sky-blue vehicle the size of a Conestoga wagon. It had blue and white striped awning material for a roof. The hood was small for a car that size, and the radiator sloped backward from its base. Like most of the antique cars, its wheels were wagon size, with thick, wooden spokes. When she got out, she could hear that the car’s engine was running, but in a very peculiar manner. Every antique car she had met so far had its own motor sound, but this one had to be the strangest. Brum-sniff, brum-sniff, brum-sniff, it went.

  Jill and Lars were walking up to an old, white clapboard house. There was a big sign, BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, over a screen door marked only by a small concrete slab. Betsy took two steps to follow, then turned to listen some more to the huge car’s motor. Yes, it was inhaling sharply between short engine sounds, brum-sniff, brum-sniff, brum-sniff. A man in jeans and blue checked shirt who had ducked around Lars on the walk now came angling toward Betsy.

  “Whaddaya think?” he asked as he stopped beside her.

  “What is it?” asked Betsy.

  “A 1901 Winton. Single cylinder. This is the car that made a transcontinental crossing of the United States, New York to San Francisco, before there were paved roads or gas stations.”

  “Wow,” said Betsy. “The pioneering spirit was still alive then, I guess.”

  That remark pleased him. “And I own a hunk of it.” The man got in and put his machine into reverse. Whining and tilting dangerously, it backed onto the lane, but then rolled smoothly on down toward the bus barns. Apparently it only sniffed while idling.

  Must be a heck of a big cylinder, thought Betsy, if you can hear it sucking wind like that. Of course, to move something that big, it would have to be one heck of a cylinder.

  She went up the walk and through the screen door—which made a very nostalgic creak when opened and a satisfactory slap when it closed. But this wasn’t a home. The floor was faded linoleum tile; the walls were dotted with Boy Scout posters and an old black bearskin.

  They had come in through the long side of a rectangular room. Tables of assorted sizes and styles were scattered around it. Behind a long one made of plywood, under the bearskin, stood three women and two household-moving-size cardboard boxes. On a nearby table was a stack of the banners drivers were to put on their cars, canvas squares with ANTIQUE CAR RUN, the soft drink symbol, and big black numbers printed on them. Ties ran off each corner.

  The women behind the table were all wearing big green T-shirts with the logo of the Antique Car Run printed on their fronts. Half a dozen men and four women waited patiently in two lines in front of the table. Lars and Jill were among them.

  One man at the head of the line was laughing at some jest he’d already made, and as the woman handed him a shirt and a clear plastic bag of materials, he asked, “What’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup?”

  “What?” asked the woman.

  “Anyone can roast beef!” he said. She made a “get away with you” gesture at him, and he turned to leave, laughing heartily. I bet he started out as a traveling salesman, thought Betsy.

  On the long table was a big computer printout listing each driver’s name, hometown, kind of car, and number of passengers. When it was his turn, Lars announced, “I’m Lars Larson, number sixty-three,” and one of the women ran a finger down the list. When she found it, she ran a highlighter mark through it.

  “Welcome to New London, Lars,” she said. “Are these your two riders?” she added, smiling at Betsy and Jill.

  Jill nodded, and Betsy said, “No, but I’m a volunteer. I’ll be logging departures tomorrow.”

  Another woman, very brisk and tiny, asked Lars, “What size T-shirt do you wear, dear?”

  “Two-X,” he replied, and she asked the same question of Jill and Betsy, then turned to one of the enormous boxes, which came up to her armpits, to dig around until she found examples in the right sizes.

  “We’ve got to get these sorted out,” she remarked to the woman with the marker. “Or I’ll fall in reaching for one and never be seen again. Here you go, dears.” Then she turned to lift out a clear plastic bag from the other box. It held maps and instructions.

  The other woman said to Lars, “Tie your banner on the left side of your car. That’s where the monitors will be standing, and they’ll want to be able to find your number quickly if you come in with several other cars.”

  Lars grinned. “I won’t be among several other cars, I’ll be way out in front.”

  The woman frowned severely at him. “Remember, this is not a race.”

  Jill snorted faintly and Betsy smiled. Not officially, no. But the cars were mostly being driven by men used to overcoming competition, and who did not like losing.

  14

  As they went down the walk out of the Boy Scout building, Betsy checked her watch. It was not quite quarter to ten, so she continued acr
oss the narrow lane and through an opening in a tall hedge into the cemetery.

  “What’s up?” asked Jill, hurrying to join her.

  “Nothing, we have a few minutes, so I thought I’d look around.”

  “In here?” asked Lars. “This is a cemetery,” he added, in case she hadn’t noticed the headstones.

  “I know. I just like cemeteries.” Betsy said it somewhat shamefacedly.

  “So do I,” said Jill.

  “You do?”

  “I thought you’d got over that!” groaned Lars. “I don’t get it, what’s the attraction?”

  Betsy said, “I like the epitaphs. They’re coming back, you know. For a long while it was too costly to put more than names and a date on a tombstone, but with laser cutters, you can have drawings and sayings all over your stone. Every so often I try to think up one for myself. I like really old ones best. ‘Behold O man, as you pass by—’ ”

  Jill joined in, “ ‘As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, you soon must be. Repent, prepare to follow me.’ ” Jill and Betsy laughed quietly, pleased to find another thing in common.

  Lars said, “I’m going to go start my car,” and walked away.

  “He’s a little sensitive,” apologized Jill. “Or are we a little mad?”

  “There’s something peaceful about cemeteries,” said Betsy. “I think long, easy thoughts in these places. Oh, look at that stone with the bus on it!”

  “Someone in the Boy Scout building said the man who owned the bus company was buried here so he could keep watch over his company.”

  A large monument near where they came in had lettering on every side. They paused to read it and found an account of an Indian massacre, noting the remains of the victims were buried here. “Say, you don’t see many of these,” said Jill.

  “I know. From the cowboy movies you’d think they’d be common, but they’re not.”

  They heard a quiet voice, and moved sideways just enough to see a woman on the other side, talking to a man taking photographs of the monument. She was saying—not reading from the monument, which had the usual sentiments about savages and innocent settlers, “. . . and the local Indian agent told them that the money promised from the federal government in payment for their land was not coming and they could try surviving that winter by eating grass. So of course, they got upset.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the man. “Here, come point at the writing so I can show in the picture how big this sucker is.”

  “Come on,” murmured Jill, and Betsy followed her back through the hedge.

  They went the short distance down the lane and then crossed the faded blacktop street to the bus barn. Drivers, some wearing the big white dusters of the period, were standing beside their machines, or tinkering with them, or running a chamois or soft cloth over them, or talking with others about adventures on the road.

  It was indicative of the determined goodwill these people had for one another that they said nothing when Lars began the lengthy process of firing up his Stanley. Steamers make internal combustion people nervous. Lars did his part by rolling his machine out of the shed first. Betsy came to help push and was surprised to find the car light and easy to move. “No transmission to weigh things down,” Lars reminded her.

  While Lars worked with his blow torch, Betsy went to look at the other cars preparing for departure. Some she had seen in Excelsior last Saturday.

  Trembling like Don Knotts was the rickety, topless, curved-dash Oldsmobile. Near it was an ancient green Sears, whose tiller came up from the side and made a ninety-degree turn to lay across the driver’s lap. The International Harvester farm wagon with hard rubber tires came rolling by.

  Here also was the immense Winton’s younger sibling, the soft-yellow car with brown fenders that could have passed as a car from the twenties, that had beat Lars to Excelsior. And there was another, brighter yellow car of very dashing design. It had wide tires, a very long hood, two seats, and a big oval gas tank on top of the trunk, right behind the seats. On the back bumper was a spare tire with a black canvas cover on which was printed MARMON, 1911. Like the Winton, it looked very competent, and she began to feel a little better about being here with the super-capable Stanley.

  Falling somewhere in between the Olds and the Marmon were a black 1910 Maxwell two-seater and an immense dark blue Cadillac touring car from 1911. There was also a beautiful, snub-nosed two-seater Buick, bright red, with its name spelled in brass on its radiator and 1907 in smaller figures.

  An early REO pickup truck, also red, with hard rubber wheels, buck-whuddled by, an enormous American flag flying from the bin. “John!” called someone as he went by, “you’re not allowed to use a sail!”

  John, laughing, answered, “That’s my line, Vern!”

  A little yellow Brush with its top up puttered along behind the REO, driven by a man who looked a great deal like Oliver Hardy. Behind it dick-dicked a red Yale whose driver and passenger were wearing white knickers and jackets, pinch-brim hats, and goggles. The car, Betsy noticed, had a back door one could use to get into the back seat. “What year?” she called to the driver.

  “Ought five!” he replied and waved as he continued up the road.

  There came an eerie sound, a low howling slowly climbing the scale as it grew louder. Heads turned in alarm toward it, then just as Betsy recognized it as the Stanley building a head of steam, someone said, “By God, you’ll never get me up in one of those things!” and there was laughter.

  “Hey, Betsy!” called Lars. “Com’ere!” She waved and went over.

  Jill said, “We’re going to leave now. Have you met up with Adam?”

  “No.” Betsy looked around, but didn’t see him. “You go ahead, I’ll find him.”

  Jill followed Lars into the car, the route papers in her hand. “We go south, which is the way we’re headed,” she said, looking at the directions. She waved at Betsy. “See you in Litchfield!”

  Lars politely waited until he was well away from the bus barn before blowing his whistle, but still some people waved impolitely at him.

  When all but one of the cars going on the jaunt had departed, Betsy was still standing there. The driver of that last car, a tall, slim man with nice blue eyes said, “Miss your ride?”

  “I don’t see how,” Betsy replied. “I was supposed to go with Adam Smith in his Renault.”

  “Last I saw him, he was in the Boy Scout building,” said the man, climbing down. “That was just a few minutes ago, but he looked all tied up.”

  Betsy’s face fell and he said, “Why don’t you ride with us? Plenty of room.” He gestured at his car, a big Model T. A woman sitting in the passenger seat waved invitingly.

  Betsy hesitated. She wanted to talk to Adam. On the other hand, if he was really tied up, she was not only not going to talk to him in any case, she wasn’t going to get to ride in one of these pioneers. “All right. I have a ride back, which I won’t get if I can’t get to Litchfield. I’m Betsy Devonshire.”

  “Mike Jimson. That’s my wife Dorothy. Climb aboard. Spark retarded?” he asked his wife.

  “Yes, love,” she said.

  Betsy opened the door and climbed into the spacious back seat, which was black leather and deeply comfortable. Mike cranked once, then again, and the Model T shook itself to life. He came around and got in, as his wife said, “South on Oak to the Stop sign at County Road Forty.”

  Used to the incredible smoothness of the Stanley, and the very faint vibration of her own modern car, she was a little surprised at the steady jiggle of the Model T, and suddenly empathetic of Charlotte’s complaint last weekend of an upset stomach.

  There was a line of six antiques waiting to cross Highway 23. The old cars were slow getting into motion, and so needed the road to be clear a considerable distance in both directions. Looking up the line, Betsy was amused to see how it was sort of like looking at a movie slightly out of focus, as each car vibrated to its own rhythm.

  When the Model T’s turn came, they wa
ited only a couple of minutes before Mike raced his engine, and, the gearbox groaning loudly, they went slowly, slowly up the slight incline and out onto the highway. They were only up to walking speed as they started down the other side, and a modern car whizzing by on the highway tooted its horn derisively.

  But now there was a clear stretch, and Mike, relaxing, suddenly burst into song. Dorothy immediately joined in:

  “Let me call you Lizzie, I’m in love with you;

  Let me hear you rattle down the av-e-nue;

  Keep your headlights glowing, and your taillight, too;

  Let me call you Lizzie, I’m in debt for you!”

  Betsy laughed. “Who wrote that?” she asked.

  “Who knows?” Dorothy replied. “It was a schoolyard song when I was young, though it might have been a vaudeville number about the time the first Model T came out. The Model T was called Tin Lizzie, you know.”

  “Yes, that’s one thing I knew about them. So I guess that song is as old as the joke that you could have a Model T in any color you wanted, so long as it was black.”

  “Do you know why all Fords were black?” asked Mike.

  “Why?” asked Betsy, expecting another joke.

  But Mike was serious. “Two reasons: first, because black paint dried quicker than any other color; and second, because it made supplying spare parts a snap. No need to try to figure out how many green fenders or blue doors or brown hood covers to stock when everything came in black. And all the parts were interchangeable, thanks to the assembly line method. People forget what a huge innovator Henry Ford was. He once said he could give his Model T’s away and make money just selling parts.”

  When they got onto County Road 2, which was a busy two-lane highway, the old cars had to run on the shoulder. Cars rushed past, some honking in greeting, others in warning, one or two in anger. Mike summoned the Ford’s best speed, which came with even more noise and so much vibration Betsy wondered why parts weren’t shaken free.