by Alice Duncan
“I doubt it,” said I. “Everybody knows he was a crook. If he was really devious and smart about it, he was probably embezzling and cheating people and keeping a second set of books somewhere else.”
“You have a vivid imagination, Annabelle,” said Richard, curse him. He was trying to humor me, but I wasn’t in the mood to be humored.
“Would you rather be arrested for murder or have the police find a second set of books?”
“Annabelle!” Ma again.
“But, Ma, it’s the truth. Chief Vickers might arrest Richard for the murder if somebody doesn’t find proof of Mr. Calhoun’s wrongdoings and come up with some more viable suspects.”
“Lord,” whispered Richard. “I’m afraid you’re right.”
“Hmm. How does a person go about doing something like that? Keeping doctored books, I mean?” asked Ma as she manhandled the ham out of the oven and set it in its cast-iron roasting pan on top of the stove with quite a bang.
“If I knew that, I’d have told the police,” said Richard. “But I can’t tell you how many people have complained to me that Mr. Calhoun had cheated them in one way or another. Mr. Contreras was lucky he could afford a lawyer.”
“Yeah,” said I, adding my two cents. “Poor Mr. Tindall wasn’t so lucky.”
But it was time to shovel the okra, which Ma had coated with cornmeal and fried, and which I loved, into a serving dish, put the ham on a platter, take the potatoes out of the oven and carefully set them on the trivet waiting for them on the dining room table, set out the corn and pinto beans, and for all of us to sit down.
What a meal! My mother is a wonderful cook. I do a fair bit of cooking myself, but for some reason, Ma’s meals always taste better than mine. Maybe that’s because she does all the work.
Conversation around the dinner table veered away from Mr. Calhoun, death not being deemed appropriate for dinner-table chitchat, but the storm gave us a wealth of material to work from. That and Jack’s schoolwork, which hadn’t been up to par lately.
“You’d better hit those books harder, Jack,” said Richard. “You’ll want to be able to get a good job when you leave school. Why, if your grades are good enough, you can even go to college.”
That comment hit a sore spot with yours truly because I’d wanted to go to college, but neither Ma nor Pa thought it worthwhile for a girl to get a higher education since girls were supposed to marry and rear families, and who needs a higher education for that? I considered this reasoning pure bunkum, but I couldn’t afford tuition on my own, so I had to abide by my parents’ rules and read a lot. Anyhow, they weren’t alone in their feelings. Most of the folks in Rosedale held similar archaic beliefs.
As for Jack, he looked as though he wanted to say something to the effect that he’d rather die than end up in a crummy old bank like Richard, but he held his tongue. I knew, because he’d told me, that Jack wanted to be a cowboy. This, even though he knew the romanticized pictures of cowboys he read in Zane Grey’s novels were total manure. A cowboy’s job was hot and hard and dusty, they didn’t make any money, and by the time they were old enough to know better, they were, most of them, too banged up to do anything else. Idiot brother.
Anyhow, I didn’t care a fig about Jack’s grades. Musing about a second set of records got me to thinking, though. If the books at the bank were clean, then Mr. Calhoun must have kept the other set of books (to be honest, I wasn’t even sure what the word “books” meant in this context) in another location, and the only location I could think of was his home. How could I, Annabelle Blue, who wasn’t well acquainted with the Calhoun family, get into their house and snoop around long enough to uncover a second set of books and maybe some incriminating papers?
This was going to take some deep thought—and probably some help from Phil, who’d be loath to give it, he being so fussy about things like breaking into other people’s houses and so forth. Nevertheless, I determined I’d talk to him about it the next day, when we’d be seeing the Harold Lloyd flicker at the Pecos Theater on Main Street.
I worked half days on Saturdays, so I had plenty of time to consider how I intended to wheedle Phil into helping me with the Calhoun business. Phil showed up in plenty of time to come in and chat with my mother and father, who looked upon him with great approval. In fact, I got the feeling sometimes that they considered him something of my own personal savior—which sounds blasphemous—because they were afraid that what with my odd ways, love of reading, and insistence upon prying into other people’s business, I might end up an old maid. As if a woman remaining unmarried were some sort of sin.
As we walked through the black, black night to the Pecos Theater, aided by the light of Phil’s flashlight, I decided to bull ahead and take the consequences if Phil rebelled.
“Say, Phil, are you going to Mr. Calhoun’s funeral on Monday?”
“Yeah. Pete and I are closing the store for a couple of hours so we can attend. My folks are coming from the ranch with Davy.”
“Great. That way Davy and Jack can disrupt the service, create havoc and embarrass both our families.”
“Pa won’t let him do that,” said Phil, although I could hear his smile. He knew, as I did, that his brother and mine were a couple of brats, especially when they got together.
“I expect Pa will keep a tight rein on Jack, too. At least I hope he will.”
Taking my hand in his, probably because it was dark and nobody could see, Phil said, “I hope so, too. Those two would probably jump into the grave for the fun of it if left to their own devices.”
“They probably would.” I hesitated a second and then proffered my request. “Say, Phil, while we’re at the funeral, would you be willing to speak with Herschel Calhoun for me? I want to find out what kind of father Mr. Calhoun was and if his family really misses him or if they’re glad he’s dead.”
“I can’t ask a question like that! For the good Lord’s sake, Annabelle—”
“You don’t just come out and ask, Phil. For the Lord’s sake yourself! Be subtle. I aim to question Gladys, because I need to find out who killed her father before the police nab Richard. Darn it, can’t you do that one tiny thing for me?”
Although I couldn’t see his face, I knew Phil was rolling his eyes because he always did when I asked his help on projects like this one.
I went on, “It’s not hard to talk to people, Phil, and it’s certainly not difficult to get a feel for how Herschel felt about his father. Heck, if my own father died, the entire family would be devastated and crying for days, but when Ma and I took our covered dish to the Calhouns the day of his death, none of them seemed particularly cut up that he’d been shot in the back. If that had happened to anyone else’s husband and father, the entire family would be in tears, don’t you think? Heck, even Betty Lou Jarvis said none of them cared when he died, and she works for them.”
“Cripes, Annabelle.”
“Please, Phil? It won’t be difficult, and I really need to know.”
“You’re not the damned police,” he growled.
“No, I’m not. The police aren’t doing their job.” I didn’t know that for a fact, but I didn’t want to take any chances. “Do you want to see my brother-in-law arrested for a murder he didn’t commit and watch my family fall apart because of it?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Well, then?”
“Oh, for . . . all right. I’ll talk to Herschel.”
“Thank you, Phil.”
He was grumpy for the rest of the evening, even though I let him kiss me when he took me home after the flicker—which was pretty funny, although my mind was swirling around other topics during the whole show.
Chapter Nine
On Monday afternoon, we closed Blue’s Dry Goods and Mercantile Emporium at a little before two o’clock and drove to the Presbyterian Church, which the Calhoun family had attended. Well, I guess they still did, except for the deceased Mr. Calhoun. Normally we would have walked there, but we had to go to the
cemetery after the service, so we took the car. Pa drove, probably to avoid an argument between Jack and me.
The place was full of flowers, primarily chrysanthemums since they were blooming at the time, although there were also bouquets of hothouse roses here and there. I guess the Calhoun family could afford such expensive floral arrangements, although I wasn’t sure where they’d got them. Maybe somebody in town had a hothouse, because I don’t think the train tracks had been repaired by then. Anyway, who ever heard of cut flowers being delivered by train?
The service, everyone agreed, was lovely, and no mention was made by the preacher of the way by which Mr. Calhoun had met his end. Mrs. Calhoun, Herschel and Gladys sat in the front pew, naturally. The two females were clad in black, as was deemed appropriate for the family of the deceased. No one else sat with them, from which I gathered that none of their other relatives lived close enough to get there in time for the funeral, Rosedale being so out-of-the-way. My family sat with Phil’s family, taking up an entire two pews in the church, there were so many of us. The contrast between our numbers and the Calhouns’ struck me, and I felt a little sorry for those three isolated people sitting all by themselves in that front pew—but not sorry enough to soften my attitude toward the deceased.
As I’d suspected would happen, Sadie Dobbs didn’t attend the service. Of course, she had to work at the café, which couldn’t afford to close for a couple of hours for anybody’s funeral. Still, I doubted she’d have attended anyway, after what she’d said about people looking at her as if she were a . . . well, you know.
Then a long line of cars, wagons and buggies followed the hearse and the Calhouns’ family Oldsmobile—the only other people in town who owned such a fancy car were Richard and Hannah, who had a Cadillac—to South Park Cemetery, where the man was buried in earth still mushy from last week’s flood. Then we all trooped back to the Calhoun place on Lee Avenue.
Phil and I walked into the house together. Betty Lou Jarvis was the official door-opener, I reckon, since it was she who let us in, and it was only then that I realized she hadn’t been at the funeral.
“Because I had to get the house ready for all the guests. There’s enough food for an army stacked up on the dining room table. I had to put all that out, too,” she muttered when I asked her about it.
I got the feeling she felt a trifle abused, not that she’d cared for Mr. Calhoun because she hadn’t, but because almost everybody else in town got a break and she didn’t. Can’t say as I blamed her for her attitude.
“All right, Phil, let’s mingle. When you sense the time is right, go talk to Herschel.”
“Criminy, Annabelle,” he muttered.
But he’d agreed to do it, a fact of which I reminded him. Phil, being the honorable young man he was, would never back out on a promise.
I began my mingling in the dining room, where lingered dainty little finger sandwiches with their crusts cut off, small savory pies filled with a chicken mixture that I liked a whole lot, bowls of olives and pickles, a platter with rolls and butter, and loads of other foodstuffs. I filled a plate and began to roam. A punch bowl sat at the end of the table surrounded by little etched crystal cups, but I didn’t take any of the punch then, as I needed a hand free in order to grab my nibbles.
Naturally, since she was my best friend, Myrtle wanted to hang out with me. That was all right. It would probably make talking with Gladys easier, since it wouldn’t feel so unnatural to approach her with my condolences and my questions with a friend at hand.
“These little chicken pies are delicious,” said Myrtle at one point.
“They sure are. Do you know if Betty Lou cooks for them, or does Mrs. Calhoun do the cooking?”
“Be serious, Annabelle,” said Betty Lou, who was at that very moment passing us with a tray filled with goodies, overhearing my question. “I do all the cooking. And all the cleaning. That woman doesn’t do anything but go to club and committee meetings.”
“Really?” I was chewing, so I couldn’t say more than that until I swallowed, then I said, “I’m really sorry you have to work here, Betty Lou.”
She sniffed with meaning. “So am I. Wish my family owned a store or a ranch or something so I could work at their business.”
“You probably wouldn’t like working on a ranch,” I pointed out. “Ranches are so isolated.”
With a sigh, Betty Lou said, “I guess you’re right. Maybe I could get a job at a store in town. Firman says they need clerks at a couple of the hotels. I wonder if they’d hire a girl as a hotel desk clerk.”
Oddly enough, Rosedale supported three fairly large hotels, primarily because, as a cattle hub, folks from back east and up north and out west traveled here for business reasons. Then there were the folks on the Chautauqua Circuit who visited occasionally. Heck, William Jennings Bryan even visited Rosedale once. Talked for hours and hours and stirred up some interest in an overall lackluster town for a couple of days. He didn’t mention his feverish opposition to Darwin’s theory of evolution, which I’d learned about in school. That had been moderately disappointing, but at least we got to stare at and listen to a famous man for a while.
“It might be interesting to clerk at a hotel,” I said. “You could meet lots of different people. Say, do you know where Gladys is? I want to pay my respects.”
“Huh. Her majesty is in the parlor, I expect, sopping up the sympathy. As if she cared about the old goat.”
“Thanks, I’ll—” And then something Betty Lou had said finally penetrated my thick skull. “Say, Betty Lou, did you say Firman told you about the hotels needing clerks? Do you mean the shoe-store man?”
“That’s the one.” Betty Lou’s face went all soft for a minute.
So Phil had been right about the two of them seeing each other. Boy, you never could tell about love, could you? Even in Rosedale, I should think Betty Lou could do better than a man who looked like a weasel and wore ugly checked suits. Oh, well. Love, according to people who should know—authors and poets and the like—was not merely blind, but a tricky business entirely.
Myrtle and I made our way to the parlor and discovered Betty Lou had been absolutely correct. Mrs. Calhoun sat in one expensive chair, holding court with the older people in town, and Gladys sat in another, likewise engaged, only with younger folks. Myrtle and I wandered over to the Gladys contingent. She was speaking in a subdued voice and didn’t seem to be saying much.
“Thank you, Phyllis. I appreciate your concern. Thank you for coming, Louise. And thanks for the flowers. They’re very pretty.” Standard stuff. We waited our turn in the line that had formed in front of Gladys, eating all the while.
Finally I managed to get close to Gladys. It was fortunate that I’d polished off the sandwiches, pies, and so forth, so I wouldn’t have to converse with her between bites.
“I’m so sorry about your father, Miss Calhoun,” I gushed. We weren’t on first-name terms.
“Thank you, Miss . . .”
“Blue,” I said. “Annabelle Blue.”
“Ah, yes. From the grocery store. Well, thank you, Miss Blue.”
“I’m sure you’ll miss him terribly.”
“Um . . . certainly.” Her eyes squinched up. She wasn’t awfully pretty, although she did have lovely, thick brown hair that shone as if she brushed it a hundred times before she went to bed every night, as my mother was always telling me I should do. “Say, aren’t you the girl who found the body?”
There went that chill up my spine. “Yes. I was. And it wasn’t any fun, either, I can tell you.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.” Then she said something that almost surprised the socks off me. “It wasn’t any fun living with him, either.” She glanced quickly around. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. Please.”
“I’ll never tell,” I said, crossing the fingers of my right hand behind my back. “Was he difficult to get along with or something?”
“Difficult?” Gladys gave a wry snort of laughter. “He was a tyrant a
nd a bully. But I really should keep the line moving. It was kind of you to come to the funeral, Miss Blue, and I’m sorry you had to be the one who found my father’s body.”
If this weren’t such a crowded room, I’d have loved to question her further, but she had a good point. I kept being bumped in the back, and Myrtle was tugging on my arm. “Please take care of yourself and your mother,” I said in parting. Don’t ask me why I said that, because I don’t know.
“Thank you, Miss Blue. That should be much easier now.” She sniffed once, then turned to greet the next person.
“Oh, my, Annabelle, that was interesting.” Myrtle, holding her empty plate, appeared avid.
“It sure was. I guess the man was no more cared for at home than he was in the community.” Except for poor Sadie Dobbs. “But let’s get some of that punch before it’s all gone. I ate so much, I probably won’t be able to eat dinner tonight.”
“Me, too,” said Myrtle.
I’d noticed her glancing a little feverishly around the room and supposed her to be looking for her gentleman friend, Sonny Clyde.
“I doubt that Sonny came to the funeral,” I said as I poured out a cup of punch for Myrtle. “Their ranch is clear over near Tatum, and I don’t think they had much to do with the Calhouns.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Myrtle with a mournful little sigh.
“We’d better be going, Annabelle. Your father wants to open the store now.” I jumped a bit, not having seen Ma approaching us.
Drat! I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Phil about Herschel. “All right, Ma. Do you mind if I say good-bye to Phil?”
A frown creased my mother’s brow, but she said, “All right, but don’t be long. People still need to do their shopping for the week, so we need to reopen the store.”
“I won’t be long,” I promised. To Myrtle I said, “I’ll talk to you later, Myrtle. We can discuss what we learned here today.”
As I scurried off searching for Phil, I heard Myrtle ask, “We learned something?” Dang it, was I the only person in Rosedale who cared who killed Mr. Calhoun? Maybe I was. It would be a different story if Chief Vickers led Richard out of the bank in handcuffs, but by then it might be too late.