by Alice Duncan
“That was very sweet of you, Susanna,” Mrs. Calhoun was saying to Ma when I reached her side, Susanna being my mother’s name.
“Oh, Hortense, I was just so sorry to hear about Edgar. If there’s anything we can do . . .” Ma’s voice drifted out before she’d finished the old tried-and-true indefinite offer of assistance to the bereaved. I must say that Hortense Calhoun didn’t look all that bereaved to me, but what did I know?
“Yes. Thank you, dear. I’ll be sure to call upon you if we need anything. And I do hope you’ll attend the funeral with your family. We’ll place a notice in the newspaper.” Mrs. Calhoun gave a deep and mournful sigh. Maybe she was more cut up about her husband’s death than I’d first supposed. “I don’t know what this will mean for the bank, but I’m sure your Richard is terribly upset. Everything must be at sixes and sevens over there right now.”
“I’m afraid you may be right,” said Ma. “We haven’t been in touch with Richard since Mr. Calhoun’s demise was . . . discovered.” I don’t think she wanted to let on that it was I who’d unearthed the tragedy, if unearthed is the right word to use when you’ve fished someone out of a flooded roadway.
I was also afraid that the bank was in a muddle, too, and that Richard might be in for more trouble than he deserved or needed. Shoot, Richard didn’t even like to fish, because he didn’t care for hooking worms. Would a man like that commit a cold-blooded murder? I don’t think so. Darn it, I had to talk to Phil and enlist his help in solving this crime!
“We can’t stay long, Hortense,” said Ma. “We need to get back to the store. Business is quite brisk, as you can imagine, because of the storm. But we wanted to extend our condolences. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” Ma had tears in her eyes. She was a truly good woman. I could only aspire to be as decent as she—but not until I’d solved this murder and had a little fun first.
Taking Ma’s hand, Mrs. Calhoun, dry-eyed and calm, said, “Thank you so much, dear. Your sympathy means a good deal to me.”
Did it? I wondered.
As Ma and I made our way through the throng to the door, I glanced into the big, fancy dining room in the Calhoun home and was surprised to see Herschel Calhoun laughing it up with a couple of his pals. Did he consider his father’s death amusing? Even if he did, I should think common decency would lead him to do his guffawing out of the sight of visitors in what was supposed to be a house of mourning.
Hmm. It wasn’t unheard of for a son to do in his father if the provocation was great enough. I suspected the Calhoun children were going to be left a lot of loot by their deceased parent. I hadn’t really heard any rumors about Herschel being a gambler or whatever, but could he have wanted to speed up his father’s end in order to inherit a bundle? Stranger things had happened.
And how was Gladys taking the death of her father? Had she adored him? Or did she think of his death as a laughable circumstance as, evidently, her brother did?
Shoot, maybe the two kids were in cahoots, and they’d both done him in. That was an interesting possibility. I’d have to take it under consideration, and that would mean having a longer chat with Betty Lou Jarvis, who seemed to know what went on in the Calhoun household.
“Annabelle Blue, wherever has your mind gone wandering?”
Ma’s voice cut into my thoughts like a sharp knife, and I jumped.
“Help me into the boat, and stop staring off into space,” she continued. “Honestly, Annabelle, sometimes I think your head is in the clouds.”
I glanced up at said clouds. A pristine blue sky beamed down upon us, frilly little clouds decorating it as though they’d never, ever, in a million years, call on their bullies of water-filled thunderhead cousins to try and drown us out down here in the quiet, dreary town of Rosedale, New Mexico. Liars.
“Sorry, Ma. I was just thinking about the Calhoun family, was all.”
“You’d better keep your mind on your own business, young lady. You don’t need to be worrying about what’s none of your concern.”
I helped Ma into the boat, which rocked a little but settled as she did. “Heck, Ma, I found the body. I can’t help but be involved in the matter. It is my concern. In fact,” I said, deciding to tell Ma something she probably wouldn’t want to hear, “it’s all of our business. Did you know that Chief Vickers told me he’s heard Richard and Mr. Calhoun had been arguing lately? I think he thinks Richard is a suspect in Mr. Calhoun’s murder.”
“What?” Ma’s screech nearly deafened me.
“Don’t rock the boat,” I advised sternly and literally. I didn’t want my mother to end up in the mud.
“You must have misheard him, Annabelle,” said Ma. She gazed up at me with a beseeching look that made me feel bad for spilling the beans.
“I didn’t mishear him, Ma. He really said that. He’s looking at Richard as a suspect. Well, Richard and a whole lot of other people who hated Mr. Calhoun’s guts.” Dang. I’d said the word guts in front of my mother, who disliked slang. Before she could berate me, I hurried on. “Anyhow, that makes Mr. Calhoun’s murder all of our business. I’m not going to allow my brother-in-law to take the blame for someone else’s evil deed.” I climbed into the boat, took the oars, and began to row us home. The water was starting to recede, and I was mainly slogging my way through deep, sticky mud by that time. It was no darned fun, I can tell you that. “I’ve got to talk to Phil. I wish the telephone would get back up.”
“What does Phil have to do with anything?” Ma asked.
I detected a note of hope in her voice. She wanted Phil and me to get married and settle down. Actually, what she wanted was for me to settle down. She thought I read too many adventure books and had begun to expect more from life than it was going to deliver. Nuts to that, and not if I could help it. Not that I’d say so to my mother, whom I loved dearly.
“He can get more information out of the folks at the bank than I can. Because he’s a man.” I spoke the last sentence with a trace of bitterness.
“You’re not going to get involved in investigating this crime, Annabelle Blue. You leave that to the police. I do believe you’ve begun to think of yourself as some sort of armchair detective, and you’re not. You’re a young woman who has to help run the store. Keep that in mind, not solving crimes.”
“Darn it, Ma, if I don’t do something, poor Richard might be sent up the river!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Annabelle, don’t be so dramatic.”
“You won’t think I’m being so dramatic when they haul Richard out of the bank in handcuffs.”
“That won’t happen.” Ma’s voice held all the confidence I didn’t personally possess.
I only huffed. It was tough, rowing through all that mud.
“Well . . .” Ma had begun chewing on her lower lip. “Perhaps you might ask Phil if he wouldn’t mind stepping over to the bank when he has time, just to . . . to . . .”
“Ask questions,” I supplied.
“Yes. I’m sure that wouldn’t hurt anything.”
“Good. After I drop you off at the store, I’ll row on down to Gunderson’s and see if I can enlist Phil in our efforts to help clear Richard’s good name.” Lord. I could feel my arm muscles growing even as I spoke.
“Don’t you think you might be a little too worried about this, Annabelle? Without good reason?”
Not wanting my mother’s concern to thwart my trip to see Phil, I said firmly, “No.”
Ma only sighed.
Therefore, after I drew the boat up to the boardwalk in front of Blue’s and saw that my mother got safely out of the one and onto the other, I continued rowing down Second Street and paid my second visit of the day to Gunderson’s. Things had calmed down a lot since my earlier visit, and the place was no longer mobbed with people.
Alone at the counter, Phil looked as if he were counting nails when I walked through the front door. He turned and smiled a big welcoming smile. “Annabelle! Good to see you again. Does your father need something else?”
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br /> “I don’t think so, but I need to talk to you. Whatever are you doing, Phil?”
He glanced down at the counter, and he blushed a little. I don’t know why he was nervous around me, but he was. Ma said he blushed because he cared for me, which made no sense at all to me. “Separating nails. They got jumbled during this morning’s rush.”
I squinted at the countertop. Sure enough, a whole bunch of nails sat there. “What’s the difference between nails?” I asked, always willing to learn something new.
“Size, mainly. Several tens got mixed in with the sevens and sixes, and Pete asked me to sort them out.”
Sixes and sevens and tens? Well, I didn’t need that much education. “Say, Phil, I need to talk to you.”
“Mind if I keep sorting while you talk?”
It sounded to me as if he didn’t expect to be participating much in our conversation. He knew me well. “Not as long as you pay attention. But I need your help.”
He glanced up, a certain eagerness on his face that I was loath to see vanish, but I wasn’t here in pursuit of romance. “It must have been rough on you, finding the body and all this morning. Sorry I was so busy I couldn’t help you out with the jitters you must have had. After all, you had to hook him so we could haul him in.”
“Yes, it was pretty awful, all right, but I’m not jittery any longer. I need to talk to you about something else.”
“Oh?” I could see his guard going up. Sometimes I think he knew me a little too well. “What else?”
“The police think Richard might have killed Mr. Calhoun,” I stated baldly, if not quite accurately. “And I need your help in proving them wrong.”
After giving me a blank stare for a minute or two, he said, “Why do they think Richard did it?”
“Because, according to Chief Vickers, employees at the bank say Mr. Calhoun and Richard have been having lots of arguments lately.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know!”
“But they’re looking at lots of people. I’m sure they only want to eliminate Richard from the list.”
“I don’t know that, and you don’t know that.”
“Come on, Annabelle. Richard seems like a real stretch to me.”
“Me, too.”
“Well, then . . .” Phil shrugged.
“Blast it, Phil Gunderson! You wouldn’t be so complacent if your brother were under suspicion of murder!”
“Annabelle, I’m sure Richard isn’t—”
“He is, too!” Very well, so I’d just stretched the truth a little. Again. “We both know Richard is innocent of the crime, but we’re not the police. Shoot, even Pa thinks Chief Vickers is—” I broke off abruptly. Pa hadn’t accused the chief of being incompetent; I was the one who feared he was, and my fears hadn’t been validated. Yet. “Anyhow, that’s why I need you.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re a man, and the bank is a man’s world.” Lord, Phil could be dense sometimes.
“Annabelle, I don’t know beans about banking. All’s I do in the bank is make deposits and withdrawals for our ranch and for Pete here at the store.”
“You don’t need to know anything about banking, for heaven’s sake. All you need to do is go into the bank and ask people why the chief claims Richard and Mr. Calhoun have been arguing recently.” Deciding it might be a good time to pile some more reasons on to my request in order to make it seem more urgent, I added, “Mr. Calhoun was only found murdered this morning, and I’ve already heard of three or four people who had more reason to kill him than Richard ever did.”
“How do you know that?”
“Phil! Can you honestly picture my brother-in-law as a murderer?” The notion was idiotic.
“Well, no, but who are these other people of whom you speak?”
He’d definitely been spending a lot of time with me. Before we took up together, he’d never have put a sentence like that together. See? I was good for him. Or at least for his grammar.
“Mr. Tindall, for one. He said it would be easier to find folks in Rosedale who did want Mr. Calhoun dead than those who didn’t. Mr. Calhoun gypped him out of his ranch. And Mr. Calhoun cheated Virginia Feather’s father out of a bunch of money for some property he didn’t even own. Mr. Calhoun, I mean. And Betty Lou Jarvis told me she thought the Calhoun family was probably glad the old man was dead, and she works in their house! Not only that, but I saw Herschel Calhoun laughing when Ma and I took Mrs. Calhoun a covered dish on our condolence call.” Thinking of Ma’s covered dish reminded me it was past lunchtime. I pressed a hand over my empty tummy.
“Playing detective again, are you?” Phil’s eyebrows lowered over his gorgeous brown eyes. How come men always get the long, beautiful eyelashes, is what I want to know.
“Darn it, Phil, somebody had better play detective if we don’t want to see Richard clapped in the clink because Chief Vickers doesn’t want to go to the bother of thoroughly investigating Mr. Calhoun’s murder!”
“Oh, for God’s—” Phil saw my black frown and heaved a huge sigh. I knew he’d already capitulated to my request. He always did, bless his heart. “Aw, shoot. I think you’re nuts to believe the chief would honestly consider Richard as a valid suspect, but all right. I’ll go over to the bank and sniff around. But I can’t do it this minute. Pete’s at the café now, getting us some lunch. I’ll snoop at the bank after that.”
My stomach growled in a most unladylike manner, but I cleared my throat at the same time, hoping Phil wouldn’t notice. “Thanks, Phil. I really appreciate it.” I turned to go back to the boat while there was still water enough out there to row through.
“Don’t get into any trouble, Annabelle. You know how you’re always getting yourself into messes when it comes to stuff like this.”
“I do not!” said I, whirling around to scowl at Phil and almost backing into Pete, who’d returned bearing food. “Sorry, Pete.”
“No problem, Annabelle. Has my baby brother been giving you grief?” Pete winked at me. He and Phil were the best of friends, as well as brothers, which I thought was swell. They had a younger brother, Davy, who was almost as beastly as my own brother Jack. Naturally, Jack and Davy were pals.
“Not at all,” I told Pete. “In fact, he’s just agreed to help me out.”
“Sir Galahad, that’s Phil. Do you need a cape thrown over a puddle so you don’t get your feet wet?”
“A cape wouldn’t do much good out there in all that mud,” I said while Phil flushed furiously. “Anyway, it’s nothing like that. Phil can tell you. Maybe you can help, too.” Heck, maybe Pete had overheard folks griping about Mr. Calhoun and his wicked ways while he’d rummaged around in his hardware store. Phil was usually stuck on the ranch, way outside of town. Pete was right there in the midst of things.
“Cripes, Annabelle, don’t get Pete involved, too.”
“Involved in what?”
Oh, my. It smelled as though Pete had bought some barbecued ribs for lunch at the café. I’d bet there was some cabbage salad, too, and maybe some potato salad. My stomach growled again. It was becoming downright angry with me for neglecting it for so long.
“I’ll let Phil tell you all about it,” said I as I headed out the door and to the boat.
Luckily for all of us, Ma had made two covered dishes while she’d been holed up in the kitchen that morning, and we got to feast on creamed chicken and peas and rice for lunch that day. My tummy was very happy about that.
After lunch, I had to work behind the counter in the store again. Pa had made Jack shovel mud from the walkway running from the house to the store and clean out the stone cooler, a job Jack didn’t want to do. I’d never tell him so, but I wouldn’t have wanted to do it either, the mud being heavy, sloppy, slippery, dirty and generally icky. When he got through, he’d have to take a bath, something he hated almost as much as he hated working. Still and all, we Blues were lucky in that we had indoor plumbing and hot and cold running water, luxuries most folks
in Rosedale couldn’t afford. Blue’s was a good business, and if Jack didn’t care about it continuing to be profitable, I sure did.
Right about closing time, Ma came to the counter to relieve me for a spell, and Myrtle Howell entered the store to ask if I’d like to join her in an ice-cream soda at Pruitt’s soda fountain. Ma nodded her approval, so I ducked under the counter and strolled next door with Myrtle.
“How come you don’t have to work this afternoon, Myrtle?”
“Mr. Pruitt and Frank told me to close the cosmetics counter. Nobody’s coming in today for cosmetics. I guess they’re frequenting stores like yours, Mayberry’s and Pete Gunderson’s. That storm was a whopper.”
“What about your folks? Did your house sustain any damage? Those winds were vicious.”
“Yes. Ma had just planted a peach tree, and it was pitiful to see her crying over it this morning. The wind knocked it clean out of the ground. Of course, the ground was mud, so it didn’t have much of a foothold.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that. Our pear tree managed to survive, but the stone cooler flooded. Fortunately, we didn’t have much in it. We’ll begin receiving the Christmas chocolates and stuff like that any day now. Pa and Jack are cleaning it out right now.” I smiled at the thought of my rotten little brother having to work his fingers to the bone while I enjoyed an ice-cream soda at Pruitt’s.
By the way, the stone cooler is a little house built of stone. When I say little, I mean it’s about as big as a couple of steamer trunks. It covers a big hole in the ground that’s also lined with stones, and in which we keep perishable luxury items like Whitman’s Samplers and other delicacies people like to give each other for Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter. Because it got so hot in Rosedale during the summertime, the stone cooler was the only place where we could keep chocolate so that it wouldn’t melt.
“Ma’s going to try to save the peach tree,” said Myrtle. “It fell over, roots and all, so she might be able prop it up again and keep it alive if she pampers it—and we don’t get any more bad storms. But it’s certainly weaker than it should be, and winter’s coming on.”