by Alice Duncan
But he was back again. “I’m very sorry, Miss Blue, but we don’t have that particular shoe in your size. Would you like me to order a pair for you?”
“Oh, no, thanks. I’d hate for you to order it and then not like it or the fit or something.” Blithering. I was blithering. Darn it!
“That wouldn’t be a problem. Your foot is of average size, Miss Blue, and if you found the shoes uncomfortable, I’m sure we could sell them to someone else.”
“Ah. Well, that’s good. But . . .” Shoot. Now what? Oh, well. “Yes, then, please do order them. I’ll come in . . . when will they get here?”
“In approximately a month.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll visit you again in a month and see if I like them when they arrive. And I’ll ask Ma about the slippers.”
“Very good, I’m sure.”
“Thank you.” And I skedaddled out of the shoe store, feeling Firman Meeks’s squinty-eyed gaze following me as I left. Jeepers. Maybe he was the world’s nicest man, but I couldn’t really see him and Betty Lou together. Then again, what did I know? Not much, is what.
Chapter Eleven
On my way to the police department, I was trying to decide if I didn’t like Firman Meeks because he looked like a weasel or if I just didn’t appreciate his manner. The conclusion I came to was that Meeks’s manner put me off. Heck, I served the public, too, in my position as clerk in my parents’ store, but I treated everyone in a friendly, agreeable manner. I didn’t sidle up to them and get stiff and snooty when they asked me questions.
On the other hand, the guy was from Chicago. Maybe people from Chicago just naturally acted differently from those of us who’d been born and reared right here in Rosedale, where everyone knew you from birth and vice versa. Having the entire town know you and your business occasionally gets irritating, but one becomes used to it if one is subjected to it from the cradle on. One even learns how to circumvent interference, if one is clever—or lucky. Therefore, because I liked Betty Lou Jarvis and wanted her to be happy in her choice of a gentleman, I decided to give Firman Meeks the benefit of the doubt. Mind you, that wouldn’t stop me from looking around and seeing if I couldn’t find her somebody I liked better.
However, once I got to the police department, I had to stop thinking about Betty Lou and Firman Meeks and concentrate on the task at hand, which was to try to persuade Chief Vickers that Richard was the least likely person in Rosedale to have killed Mr. Calhoun.
I opened the door and marched in. The deputy at the desk, a fellow with whom I’d gone to school, Martin Rogers, and who’d recently joined the force, glanced up from the desk behind which he sat and smiled at me. “Hey, Annabelle.”
“Hey, Martin. Is the chief available? I’d like to speak to him for a few minutes if he’s not busy.”
“What about?” asked Martin, curse him.
“The Calhoun case. As you can imagine, it’s important to my family, especially since I hear the chief brought my brother-in-law down here for questioning this very morning.”
Martin folded his hands on a pile of papers on his desk. “Yes, well, what is it you want to say to the chief, Annabelle?”
“What I want to tell the chief is what I want to tell the chief, Martin, not you.” I was becoming annoyed at this clear attempt to keep me from my goal. “I’m a citizen of Rosedale, and I should think I’d be allowed to speak to the chief if I want to. Are you trying to keep me from him? Why is that, Martin?”
“Hold on, Annabelle. I’m not trying to keep you from the chief. But as you can imagine, he’s a really busy man.”
“So am I. Well, I’m not a man, but you know what I mean. And I’ve been deputized by my family to talk to the chief, so let me at him. Or do I have to make an appointment? For heaven’s sake, Martin, I’m the one who found Mr. Calhoun’s body!”
“I know. Hold on a minute, Annabelle. I’ll see if he can see you.” He left his desk and went through a door leading to the back of the police station.
Fuming, I browsed the “wanted” posters tacked to the walls of the lobby. Criminals, criminals, criminals. Who’d want to be a criminal? I didn’t understand. Heck, I’d have to go to a good deal of hard work to get into trouble, yet according to the descriptions I read on the posters, there were tons of folks in the good old USA who couldn’t stay out of trouble to save themselves. Why was that? It seemed so easy just to follow the rules and obey the law. Life was simple that way. You didn’t have to go around looking over your shoulder to check if the police might be chasing you. I guess bootleggers made a lot of money, but they also got killed a lot—well, not more than once each, but you know what I mean. Sounded like a lot of anxiety and stress and bother to me. I’d rather read a good book, relax and be normal than have to worry about being caught, arrested and flung in the clink, even if I got rich in the process. Heck, if you were in the clink, you couldn’t enjoy your ill-gotten gains, could you?
Perhaps I lacked a certain type of imagination required for criminal work, although I had plenty—my mother would say too much—imagination for other things. The lack of criminality in my personal character might be what made me so crummy at the interrogation of people. Witness my late confrontation with the mild-mannered but ferret-like Firman Meeks. He wasn’t a suspect, but only the fellow a friend was sweet on, and I’d only talked to him to see if he was good enough for her—and it didn’t even matter what I thought. Betty Lou was the one who’d be stuck with him if they married and bought the house he’d gone to the bank to get a loan for.
Bother. After perusing the “wanted” posters, I plunked myself down in one of the hard wooden chairs lining the shabby lobby of the police department. It galled me that citizens of Rosedale, New Mexico, one of the smallest towns in the world, should have to go through intimidation and questioning in order to speak to their police chief. Darn it, we citizens were the ones who’d elected him! Well, I personally didn’t, not being quite old enough to vote yet, but if anybody from the PD gave me any more grief, I’d be darned if I’d vote for Vickers next time an election was held.
Or was the police chief hired by the city councilmen? Bother. I didn’t know. Either the sheriff or the police chief was an elected official, but I couldn’t remember which was which. I really needed to study this stuff if I planned to do any more investigations. Which I didn’t, but still . . .
“Miss Annabelle,” Chief Vickers said in a jovial voice, coming into the lobby to greet me. “Martin tells me you want to talk to me. Come in. Come in.”
Very well, maybe I would vote for him. But only if he found the real killer of Mr. Calhoun and didn’t pin the crime on my brother-in-law.
“Thanks for seeing me, Chief,” I said as I followed him into his office.
“Not at all. Not at all. I understand you want to chat with me about the Calhoun case.”
He gestured for me to take a chair opposite his desk, so I did. This one was hard and uncomfortable, too, but I guess one shouldn’t expect luxury in a police department. “Yes, I do. I understand you brought Richard, my brother-in-law, down here for more questioning this morning.”
“Yes, we did. However, as you must know, I can’t tell you any more than that. We need to keep a lid on ongoing investigations.”
“Is that so? Well, I want you to know that Richard isn’t the only person in this town who had grievances against Mr. Calhoun.”
“I know that, Miss Annabelle. No one knows it better than I.”
Hmm. That took the wind out of my sails for a second, but I forged onward. “Well, then, I don’t understand why you’re not bringing in Micah Tindall or Armando Contreras or Mr. Feather or any number of other people whom Mr. Calhoun swindled. Or his mistress, Sadie Dobbs.” I felt my face flame when I said the word mistress. Nevertheless, I bulled on. “Or his family. Heck, they all hated him. Maybe one of them decided to do the world a favor and plug him.”
“I must say you use colorful language, Miss Annabelle.”
“It may be colorful,
but it’s also the truth. Richard MacDougall is the least likely of all the people in Rosedale to have committed cold-blooded murder, Chief Vickers, and you know that. He and Mr. Calhoun were having arguments at the bank because Richard didn’t approve of the way Mr. Calhoun was treating his banking clients.”
“I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation, Annabelle. You know that. However, you probably will be happy to know that we’ve interviewed Miss Dobbs and the other people you mentioned. Mr. MacDougall is as of much interest to us as anyone else. He even owns a firearm that corresponds to the caliber of the murder weapon.”
Although I hate to admit it, I goggled at the man. “Richard? Owns a gun? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. We found it when we searched his home.”
“And are you sure it was his?”
“He denied owning the weapon,” the chief said, although I don’t think he wanted to.
“Well, then,” I said, throwing my arms in the air. “There you go. It was planted in Richard and Hannah’s house by whoever did the deed. Listen, Chief Vickers, I know Richard MacDougall. He hates guns.”
“There’s no getting around the fact that a weapon was found in his home.”
“It wasn’t his gun,” I said stubbornly. “Anyhow, more than half the folks in Rosedale own guns! Didn’t you find guns in any of the other suspects’ homes?”
The chief grimaced. “I’ve already told you too much, Miss Annabelle. I know this case is of interest to you because your brother-in-law is involved—”
“He is not!”
Chief Vickers sighed heavily. “He’s as much involved as Mr. Tindall or any of the others. And yes, we found weapons in many other homes, too.”
“Well, then,” I said, and didn’t know what to say next.
The chief’s shoulders sagged slightly. “You’ll be pleased to know we’re investigating all the others who had weapons of a similar caliber. After all, as you’re probably aware, possession is—”
“Nine tenths of the law. Yeah, I know that.”
I must have looked discouraged, because the chief said, “We’re working every angle we can find, Miss Annabelle.”
“Are you investigating Armando Contreras and Mr. Feather?”
The chief let out a gusty sigh. “Yes, Miss Annabelle. We’re talking to Mr. Contreras and Mr. Feather, among many, many others.”
“What about the rest of the Calhoun family? My friend, Betty Lou Jarvis, works and cooks for the Calhoun family. She told me they all hated him and she wouldn’t be surprised if one of his kids did him in.”
After staring at me for several seconds, making me want to squirm, Chief Vickers wrote this interesting item down on his pad. He shook his head. “Thank you, Miss Annabelle. We’ll take this bit of . . . information into consideration.”
He wanted to thank me for spreading gossip; I could tell. Because I really did feel as though I’d been blabbing over the back fence or something, I said defensively, “Well, if anyone should know how that family works, it’s Betty Lou. She even lives in the same house with them.”
The chief sighed. “Anyone else you can think of who we should look at, Miss Annabelle?” he asked politely, probably to make me feel less foolish than I did.
“Not that I’ve heard about, but at the funeral I heard lots of people say they were glad Calhoun was dead, and I’m sure there were good reasons for their comments.” After hesitating for a second, I said, “You might want to talk to Sadie Dobbs again. She told me he gave her money sometimes, and he might have given her money he’d embezzled from the bank—”
“Embezzled!” The chief’s roar made me jump. “Tell me exactly how you know the man was embezzling bank funds, Miss Annabelle.”
Dang. “Well, I can’t prove it, because I don’t know anything. Richard said the bank’s books were clean, but if they were clean, Calhoun must have been keeping the money he chiseled out of his victims somewhere else. It only makes sense.”
“We’ve done a thorough investigation at the bank and at his home, Miss Annabelle. Nothing seems amiss. As for Miss Dobbs, we have no reason to believe Mr. Calhoun gave her anything but some cash and presents. I know you don’t want Mr. MacDougall to be guilty, but we really do know how to do our job.”
Chief Vickers rose from his chair, signaling that our chat was over. “Thank you for dropping by, Miss Annabelle.”
Bet he didn’t mean that. “Thank you for paying attention to what I said, Chief. I know Richard didn’t kill Mr. Calhoun.”
“Yes, well, we’ll see.” And he saw me to the door.
“I’ll be back if I hear of anyone else who might have a motive,” I promised—or maybe it was more of a threat.
“Thank you. We always appreciate it when citizens are eager to help us do our job,” said the chief, lying through his teeth.
Hmm. As I walked west on the boardwalk, I considered my day so far. I hadn’t done awfully well at getting information out of Firman Meeks. I wondered where a person who was interested in such things could get training in investigative techniques. Perhaps I should join the police department, if they allowed females in. Police departments probably taught a person how to ask questions effectively and get good results. All I seemed to do was stumble around and antagonize people.
My mother would faint dead away if I tried to do anything so outrageous as join a police department anywhere at all, much less in Rosedale. My father would probably disown me. Nuts. It didn’t seem fair to me that women weren’t welcomed into police departments the world over. We were ever so much more perceptive than men. For the most part, anyway.
Before I went back to Blue’s, I decided to pay Phil a visit at the hardware store. He was going to hate what I was going to ask him to do, but I was pretty sure he’d do it anyway. Phil nearly always did what I asked him—and nearly as often hated every minute of it. But I really did want to get him to watch out for danger and/or interlopers that night when I rifled through Mr. Calhoun’s home office.
“You’re going to what?” Phil actually roared at me. “Annabelle Blue, are you out of your mind?” He ran his fingers through his hair as he added that last part. “But of course, you are. I already know that. And you think you know better than the police and God Himself about criminal investigation, too.”
“That’s not fair, Phil,” I said, hurt to the core. “I’m a lousy investigator, but at least I’m doing some investigating. That’s more than the police seem to be doing! Why, did you know that Chief Vickers hauled Richard into his office this very morning?”
Phil sagged against the counter of his brother’s store. “From what I’ve heard, they’ve had half the men in town in there to question them about Mr. Calhoun. Richard’s not the only one.”
“But he’s the only one connected to my family, Phil! Wouldn’t you want to discover the truth if the police suspected Pete of a dastardly crime?”
“Dastardly,” muttered Phil, clearly believing I was overreacting to circumstances.
“It was a dastardly crime,” I said, defending my choice of words.
“Yes, yes, I know. And yes, I’d want to find out the truth if Pete were suspected of something like murder. But I’ll be hornswoggled if I’ll abet you in breaking into the Calhoun place and poking around in things that are none of your business.”
“Darn it, Phil, this is my business! Richard’s my brother-in-law!”
“Criminy, Annabelle, you just won’t give up, will you? Police matters are best left to people who know how to conduct them. Besides, you’ve got work of your own to do. It’s better to butt out of police business.”
“Nonsense. I’ve talked to Betty Lou Jarvis, and she told me the police didn’t conduct anywhere near a thorough search of the Calhoun house. Anyhow, you don’t have to abet or break into anything. I just want you to stand guard outside the window and warn me if anybody seems to be moving around in or out of the house. And I won’t have to break in, either, because Betty Lou is leaving the window unlocked for me.”<
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“Oh, for cripes’ sake,” moaned Phil.
“Please, Phil? I’ll appreciate you forever.” I considered batting my eyelashes at him, but gave up the notion as too stupid a thing to do. I didn’t like it when girls played up to men using their feminine wiles, because I consider such tactics demeaning.
“I’ll just bet,” he grumbled. Then he squinted square into my eyes. “You’re going to do this idiotic stunt whether I go with you or not, aren’t you?”
“Well . . . yes. I have to, Phil! Even you must see that.”
“I don’t see anything of the kind.”
“Darn it, I just came from Chief Vickers’s office, and he still thinks Richard did it.” Very well, so that was kind of an exaggeration.
After heaving a gigantic sigh, turning around twice, slamming his fist against the wall—which brought Pete out of the back room; Pete only glanced at the two of us, grinned, and went back again—he gave up. “Damnation, I just hate it that you can always talk me into doing crazy stuff like this.”
I thought it was one of his more sterling qualities, but I didn’t say so. “Oh, thank you, Phil! You won’t regret it. I promise you won’t. You’ll feel like a hero when the real killer is caught and Richard can go back to living his life without worrying again. And Hannah, too,” I added, as a conscientious sister should.
“Nuts,” muttered Phil. “What time do you want to do this stupid thing?”
A moment’s thought gave me the appropriate answer. “I do believe these searches are traditionally undertaken at midnight.”
Phil gave me a hard look. “This isn’t a game, Annabelle.”
“I know it’s not. That’s why I’m doing it.”
“Aw . . . shucks.” I think he wanted to use another, less proper, word.
“And if the family is still up and about at midnight, we can just wait a while.”
“Great. I’ve always wanted to lurk outside somebody’s house in the middle of a cold November night. There’s a new moon tonight and it’s supposed to be cloudy, which means it will be darker than sin. Wonder if it’ll rain. That would add zest to the atmosphere.”