“Are you turning religious, Bo?” the priest said. “How come? Been having chest pains?”
“None of your business,” Tully said. “Are you coming or not?”
The priest chewed the last of his sandwich, finished off his glass of milk, pushed back from the table, and put the dish and silverware in the sink. “It so happens Agatha and Bernice are among my most-favorite people in the entire world, too.”
“I hope you’re not saying that just because the ranch is the best quail hunting in the state.”
“Heaven forbid. The fact is I’m very fond of those two ladies, and if you think it would give them some comfort for me to participate in the ceremony, I will certainly do so.”
Half an hour later, the three of them were headed for the little town of Famine, to pick up Dave Perkins at Dave’s House of Fry. The gas gauge on the huge van was the first one Tully had ever seen actually move. It touched empty just before they arrived at the town of Famine. Fumes alone took them into the little town. He pulled into Famine’s only gas station with its lone pump, the regular. The boy attending the pumps couldn’t have been older than twelve.
“I see two coffins in back,” he said. “You got bodies in them?”
“Yeah,” said Tully. “One of them is a boy not much older than you.”
“Gee,” the kid said. “That’s kind of sad. What happened, Sheriff?”
“They were murdered.”
“What you going to do with them?”
Tully studied the boy. He seemed sincere. “We’re taking them up to Angst to bury them on a ranch near where the boy lived. We’re putting together a little burial service.”
The boy pondered this for a moment. “Can I come along? Angst ain’t that far.”
Tully looked at Pap. The old man shrugged.
“The more the merrier,” Tully said.
“I’ll go ask my mom. She owns the station now. The old owner is in prison.”
“I know,” Tully said. “I put him there.”
The kid ran into the station and came back with his mother, a stern-looking woman in men’s bib overalls and straggly gray-brown hair sticking out from under an old felt hat. She looked in the back of the van at the coffins. “That’s real sad,” she said. “A youngster scarcely older than Jim here and somebody murdered him. There’s some mighty mean folks in the world. Can you get Jim back this evening, Sheriff? I need him around the station.”
“I’ll get him back,” Tully said. “He’ll make a good addition to our little group of mourners.”
As they pulled out of the station, Flynn said, “We’re picking up Dave the Indian, aren’t we? He’s pretty fond of Agatha and Bernice.”
“Sure,” Pap said. “He’s waiting for us. As a matter of fact he can have my seat. I’m going to lay down in back and catch some shut-eye.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to lie down between those two coffins,” Flynn said.
“Why not? Those fellas won’t cause me any mischief.”
“You’re right about that,” Tully said. He motioned with his thumb toward the back. “At least two of them back there won’t bother us with their snoring.”
He drove over to Dave’s House of Fry. Dave was looking for them from a window in his dining room. He came out and climbed into the van’s front seat next to the priest.
“Hello, Flynn. Looks as if we’re getting together for a hunt.”
“I wish we were, Dave.”
“It’s four months to quail season, Padre,” Tully said. “Not that it makes too much difference to a man of the cloth.”
The priest laughed. “Just because your Blight Way habits haven’t rubbed off on me, don’t be suggesting I violate game laws. I am most happy to officiate at an unofficial burial, however, despite its unusual nature and not at all because it involves the owner of the finest quail hunting in the state.”
Dave nodded at Jim. “So what brings the boy along?”
“Probably because he leads a life almost as dull as the rest of ours,” Tully said. “Right, Jim?”
“I just thought it was sad, burying a kid.”
“I like a lad with sensitivity,” Dave said. “You don’t see that much anymore. I just hope his hanging out with this crowd won’t erode it. Speaking of that, where’s Pap?”
“He’s snoozing back between the coffins,” Tully said. “He can sleep just about anywhere. That’s Jim back there, Dave, in case you don’t know him. He’s going to the burial with us.”
“Jim pumps my gas all the time,” Dave said. “So what’s the plan, Bo?”
“Well, the first order of business, we’ll get Tom and Sean laid to rest. Then I want to go visit the Finches again. I’ve brought along a search warrant, just in case they turn out to be fussy about such things.”
“A search warrant? What are we searching for?”
“A rolling-block rifle. Remember when Margaret said they had a whole basement full of guns Teddy’s grandfather had collected? There may be a rolling-block or two down there.”
“You think Teddy’s grandfather may have murdered Tom and the boy?” Dave said.
“It’s crossed my mind. Suppose Jack Finch happened upon their little mine. He goes inside and sees the veins of gold in the quartz. He kills Tom and Sean before they can file a claim. He blasts the rock cliff up above and buries the mine with the bodies inside. Then he goes up on top and sinks a shaft down until he hits the gold-bearing ore of the little mine. The Finches eventually take millions in gold out of that mine.”
“You’re saying he shafted the little mine, not to mention Tom and Sean. You think Jack Finch was the kind of man to do that, a man who would kill two people just to make himself incredibly rich?”
Tully turned north on the highway to Angst. “You may remember, Dave, that Teddy said his father would break into a sweat and start to shake at the mere mention of Jack’s name. And that was after Jack had been dead for several years! There were some pretty fierce characters running around back in those days. You read some of the articles they wrote for newspapers about their early days and they sound like comical old characters, like every one of them had studied under Mark Twain, but in fact they were hard and mean and willing to do whatever it took to amass a fortune.”
Dave said, “Besides the millions in gold the Finches extracted from the mine, you’ve probably forgotten Pap’s take. With its price right now, Pap probably has a thousand dollars’ worth of gold in that ketchup bottle.”
“I’m sure he’s got that figured out,” Tully said. “No wonder he was so anxious to find it.”
The priest said, “Wait a minute, Bo. I just thought of something. I hope Jim and I aren’t going to be stuck up here while you pursue some dangerous criminal.”
“Naw, Flynn. I’d never do that to Jim. I’ve got Deputy Ernie Thorpe up here. I’ll send you and Jim back with him in his patrol car. I should point out that patrol car may have been the occasion of sin, if I know Thorpe. You may want to speak to him about that, Padre.”
They passed a woman walking along the highway. Dave turned and looked back. “Hold up a second, Bo. That woman looks like she’s been beaten up. She’s walking barefoot, too.”
Tully slowed to a stop and backed up. He pulled over next to the woman, got out of the van, and walked around to where she was plodding along, staring off into the distance. He opened his jacket so she could see his gun and the badge on his belt. She turned and looked at him, then down at the badge.
“I ain’t done nothin’,” she said.
“I don’t know about that, Miss, but somebody has beaten you up. Both your eyes are black and your lip is split and swollen.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Bud is a mean drunk.”
“What’s your name?”
“Judy York.”
“What’s Bud’s name?”
“Tanzy. Bud Tanzy.”
“How come he beat you up, Judy?”
“No reason. He just got drunk and started waving his gun around. After
a while he went to sleep and I split.”
“Where are you going, Judy?”
“Don’t know. I’m just going.”
“I want you to go with us. First I’ll take you to a hospital. Then we’ll figure out a place for you to stay. You can’t just wander along the road.”
“Okay,” she said.
Tully took her by the hand and began leading her back to the van. “What kind of occupation does Bud have, if any?”
“He robs places.”
“He does? Convenience stores by any chance?”
“Yeah, every night he goes out and robs another store. He never gets much money. If I was going to rob something, I’d rob a bank.”
“I would, too,” Tully said. “Bud must be pretty dumb.”
“Dumb and mean.”
He opened a door of the van for her. “So where is Bud right now?”
“He’s asleep in that old shack of a house down the road a piece. I waited till he was asleep and then took off.”
Tully helped her into the backseat of the van and introduced her to the others. “Judy tells me the guy who beat her up is asleep in an old house back down the road a ways. She says he robs convenience stores about every night. He appears to be the guy Daisy told me about. So we’re going to turn around and drive back a bit.”
“You going to shoot him, Sheriff?” Jim said, suddenly interested.
“I’d like to, but I think I’ll just arrest him. Dave, open the glove compartment and see if there’s a piece of rope in there.”
Dave opened the compartment. “Nope. A ball of some fairly heavy twine, though.”
“That will do.”
Tully turned the truck around and headed back down the road.
“There’s the house,” Judy said.
Tully turned the van around and parked it on the edge of the highway. He got out and walked down the driveway to the house. The place looked as if it were about to fall down. He stepped very quietly onto the rickety porch and stopped to listen. Faint sounds of snoring came from inside. He drew his gun, turned the knob on the door, opened it slightly, and peeked in. A man was asleep on an old couch. A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the chair next to the couch. A revolver was next to the bottle. The man wore only pants and an undershirt. Tully tiptoed up next to him and placed the muzzle of his 9 mm Colt Commander against his temple. The man’s eyes popped open.
“Relax, partner. You’re under arrest for assault and battery and armed robbery.”
The man heaved what Tully interpreted to be a sigh of relief. “Scared me,” he said. “I thought it was Judy. There really ain’t no reason to arrest me.”
“You rob stores,” Tully said. “You’re the ‘Eight O’clock Robber.’”
The man took a moment to reply. “Well, yeah, I guess.”
Tully had Tanzy put on his shirt and shoes and a rumpled suit jacket he found in a closet. Then tied his hands behind him with the twine.
“Hey, that’s too tight,” Tanzy said. “It’s cutting into my wrists.”
“What’s your point?” Tully said. “I’m not sure this twine will hold you, Bud, but you better hope it does. I have a serious dislike of men who beat up women.” He picked up Tanzy’s gun and slipped it into a pocket of his jacket.
He put Tanzy in the backseat of the van with the boy and Judy. “Don’t worry, Judy, his hands are tied. There’s a tire iron on the floor back there. If he tries anything, hit him across the nose with it. That will get his attention.”
Judy called Tanzy an obscene name.
“Watch the language,” Tully said. “We have a priest here. Also Jim.”
Judy turned to Jim. “Sorry, kid.”
“That’s okay. I hear it in school all the time.”
“Yeah,” Tully said. “Those teachers get tougher all the time.”
“I should have gone to school,” Tanzy said. He turned and looked into the rear section of the van. “What are those coffins doing back here?”
Tully explained about the coffins.
“Too bad,” Tanzy said. “At least I never killed nobody.”
“That makes three people in this van who haven’t,” Tully said. “So you might want to be on your best behavior, Bud.”
Dave said, “What are we going to do if we run into Lucas now?”
“Then it’s every man for himself. Woman, too.”
“You talking about Lucas Kincaid?” Judy said.
“Shut up, Judy!” Tanzy shouted and shoved against her. She reached down on the floor and picked up the tire iron. Tanzy shrank back.
“That’s exactly who we’re talking about,” Dave said. “Why, you know him?”
Judy tapped the tire iron up and down on the palm of her hand. “He stayed overnight at our place a couple days ago!”
“Shut up, Judy! You don’t know nothing.”
“I know something! He took all our food and money!”
“Shut up, I told you! He’ll come back and kill us both! We’re lucky to get out alive as it is!”
Tully tipped up the brim of his Stetson, and glanced back at Tanzy. “Took all your money, did he? How much did he get?”
Tanzy shrugged. “Fifty-two dollars and change. When Lucas asks you for something, you best give it to him. You give it all to him.”
“How come you know Kincaid, anyway?”
“Met him in prison a year ago. He was one angry old man. Said he felt like killing half the county, but you were first on his list, Sheriff.”
“He’s already killed four people since he got out, so I guess I’ve moved down the list.”
Judy moaned. “He’ll kill us all he gets the chance! You got any idea where he is now, Sheriff?”
Tully tugged the droopy corner of his mustache. “No, I don’t. I wish I did but I don’t. I think he intends to hide out in the Snowies. If he does that, we may never find him. What puzzles me is why he wants money. There’s no place to spend money in the mountains.”
“He’s probably putting together a grubstake,” Pap said. “Fifty-two dollars will buy a lot of dried beans.”
Judy poked Tanzy in the belly with the end of the tire iron. “If Lucas goes into a store to buy anything, they’ll probably give him whatever he wants just to get rid of him. He stinks to high heaven.”
“Yeah,” Tanzy agreed. “He stunk bad in prison, too. When the guards couldn’t stand it anymore, I think they hosed him down. Probably from a distance, because he can snap your neck like a twig.”
“I don’t recall he smelled all that bad when I arrested him,” Tully said. “Maybe it was a hobby he took up later. By the way, Bud, how come you went back to robbing stores as soon as you got out of prison?”
“It was the only work I knew.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
22
THEY ARRIVED IN Angst with enough gas to get them to the service station. “Fill her up,” Tully told the attendant.
“What are those coffins doing back there?” the attendant asked.
Tully explained once again about the remains. The man shook his head and began filling the tank.
Pap suddenly sat up between the caskets. “What’s going on?” he said.
Tully leaned out his window and yelled. “Stop that! You’re spraying gas all over. It’s only my father!”
The attendant was wild-eyed. “I don’t care who it is! Get it out of here!”
Tully finally got the man calmed down. Pap began to climb over into the backseat.
“Stay away from me!” yelled Tanzy.
“You guys are starting to hurt my feelings,” Pap said, sliding into the rear seat next to Judy. “I don’t know how an old man is expected to get any sleep with all the blabbing going on.”
Tully told them Pap had only been resting.
“I was plumb wore out,” Pap said. “I guess I did sleep like I was dead.”
“My nerves can’t take much more of this,” Tanzy said.
Tully handed Tanzy’s revolver to Pap and told him to u
se it if Tanzy tried to escape.
“I got my own,” Pap said.
“I know you do. But if you use it we’ll probably have to throw it away. So take Tanzy’s. We can’t be throwing away expensive guns!”
“Good thinking,” Pap said. He took the revolver.
“If you think you’re scaring me,” Tanzy said, “You are. I’ve never been arrested by cops this crazy!”
“Thanks,” Pap said.
After dropping Pap and the others off at Jake’s Café for lunch, Tully intended to take Judy to the local emergency room, but she said there was nothing wrong with her that a little makeup wouldn’t cure. So he rented a motel room and sent Judy into the bathroom to take a shower. Then he went to JCPenney and bought her a dress, two blouses, a pair of slacks, nylons, underwear, white socks, white sneakers, and makeup. He put it all on the county credit card. He returned in less than an hour. Judy, a pink towel wrapped around her, was seated on the bed. She took the cartons and bags into the bathroom. When she came out dressed in some of her new clothes, lipsticked, powdered, rouged, and eye-shadowed, she looked almost pretty. With a hairdo, she would have been.
“I can’t believe you did all this for me,” she said. “I can’t believe anyone would, let alone a cop.”
“I’m not finished,” Tully said. “Blight County may be a little backward compared with other parts of the country, but it looks after its own. And you’re part of its own.”
Tully went down to the motel office to check out. “We should get a cut rate,” he told the clerk at the counter. “We were here only about an hour.”
“Most of our clients usually are,” the clerk said. “Fifteen dollars.”
Tully decided it was best to pay in cash. He and Judy walked over to Jake’s Café. Pap had untied Tanzy’s hands so he could eat. They had finished their lunch and were chatting like a bunch of old friends. Judy said some of her teeth were sore and ordered only the soup. Tully ordered a hamburger. No one apparently had ordered the Canadian hash.
After Tully had tied up Tanzy’s hands again, they climbed back into the van and headed for Quail Creek Ranch. “So, who’s officiating at this burial?” Flynn asked.
The Double-Jack Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) Page 13