Pecos Valley Rainbow

by Alice Duncan

  “Oh, Phil, no!”

  “Oh, Annabelle, yes,” he said, giving a weak imitation of my cry of dismay. “And I won’t do it again, so you’d better not be planning any more midnight antics.”

  “No. I found what I was after. Or you did, I mean.”

  “Papers the law can’t use. Is that what you were after?”

  Once more, I buried my face in my hands. “Lord, now I don’t know what to do.”

  “Let the police do their job, would be my suggestion.”

  “You’re probably right.” It galled me to think about Chief Vickers attempting to put anything together from the papers in the folder I’d given him. Maybe I wasn’t giving the chief enough credit. I hoped he was more competent than I feared he was. Heck, my whole family’s future might depend on him being smarter than I believed he was.

  Talk about a melancholy afternoon; after Phil left—and he didn’t lighten up on me one little bit—I had to serve customers and worry. And worry. And then my obnoxious brother came home from school, and Ma set him to work dusting the shelves and tidying up our displays of cranberries and canned pumpkin and making sure the pumpkins on the boardwalk were still artistically arranged. The whole time he did it, he whined about having to work. I wanted to beat him with a stick just to make him shut up, he was trying my already-frazzled nerves so much.

  A little before five o’clock, Pa came home from wherever he’d spent the day and told me I could go on about my business.

  “What about me?” whined Jack.

  “You finish your work, young man, and then you can go do your homework until your mother calls us in for supper.”

  “Gee whiz, Pa. I’ve already—”

  “Shut your mouth, Jack Blue, and do what you’re told.”

  To my amazement, Jack did what Pa told him and shut his mouth. On the other hand, Pa didn’t take much guff from anyone, a lesson he’d taught Jack by hand several times.

  And then an astonishing thing happened. Myrtle Howell barreled into the store, her eyes wide, and her face a becoming pink. Since I was pretty sure Sonny Clyde wasn’t going to appear in town until Thanksgiving, I cried, “Myrtle! What’s going on?”

  “Annabelle! You’ll never believe this!” Then she saw my father. “Oh, Mr. Blue, please forgive me, but I just had to come in and tell Annabelle—and the rest of you, too, of course—the news! Mr. Pruitt just got a telephone call from somebody, and whoever it was says the chief just arrested Micah Tindall for the murder of both the Calhoun men!”

  If there had been a chair handy, I’d have sunk into it in shock. Since there wasn’t, I clutched the counter and stared at Myrtle. “You’re kidding!”

  “Am not!” She shook her head violently to add credence to her denial. “It’s the truth. Well, that’s what Mr. Pruitt told me, anyhow, and I expect it’s the truth. Apparently the chief found papers in Mr. Calhoun’s house that proved he was blackmailing Mr. Tindall or something, and when the chief went to Mr. Tindall’s brother-in-law’s house, Mr. Tindall kind of collapsed, and they arrested him.”

  “Good heavens. I know Mr. Tindall told me Mr. Calhoun had cheated him out of his ranch, but . . . my goodness.” Somehow, it was very hard for me to picture the admittedly bitter and angry Mr. Tindall as a murderer. Then again, if all crooks looked like crooks, they’d never succeed at their professions, would they?

  “Micah Tindall?” said Pa, sounding as incredulous as I felt. “But that poor man has a wife and four children. Why would he jeopardize his whole family . . . ?” His words trickled out, and he ended by just shaking his head.

  “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” said Myrtle. “Mr. Pruitt even said he didn’t believe it to whoever called, but it’s the truth, I guess. The police arrested Mr. Tindall, so I guess they think he did it.”

  And they used papers I’d given them as their proof. Oh, boy, that made me feel lower than the scum under a pond rock. But what about the gun that had been found in Richard’s house? Had Micah Tindall planted it there? Hard to imagine. Yet I’d seen his initials on that piece of paper, too, and I’d read all those notes people had written to Mr. Calhoun. I wished I could ask all the men whose initials had appeared on that list to write a few words on a sheet of paper for me and then compare the handwriting to see if any of them matched the notes berating Mr. Calhoun.

  “But I have to get back to work now. I’ll telephone you later, Annabelle,” Myrtle promised, leaving the store almost as quickly as she’d entered it.

  Pa and I looked at each other. Pa shook his head. Jack, oddly enough, didn’t say a word. Having a person you know and like arrested for murder will do that to a person, I reckon, even if he is an obnoxious twelve-year-old.

  As for me, I was feeling glum and useless and as if all I’d done was mess things up for Micah Tindall.

  Pa turned me loose. I took my books back to the house, and then I decided to go for a walk. The house already smelled like roasting pork, which is one of the most delicious smells in the world. I breathed in deeply and wished I’d taken another pickle before I left the store.

  Ma called out to me as I passed the kitchen on my way to the front door. “Annabelle, will you stop by the shoe store and get those slippers for your father? Let me get the money for you. Three dollars, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  So I waited while she climbed on the step stool and got down the sugar bowl in which she kept her little stash of disposable cash. Even though we ran a successful grocery and dry-goods business, neither she nor Pa threw money around.

  Holding on to the money, she hesitated for a second and then asked, “I haven’t seen the slippers. Do you really think your father will like them?”

  “They’re very nice. Fine soft leather lined with sheepskin and everything. They ought to keep his tootsies warm even when it snows outside. I know they’re expensive.”

  “Yes, they are. But your father deserves a luxury or two.”

  “Yes, he does. So do you.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to butter me up, Annabelle Blue.”

  “Am not.” But I smiled, too.

  She shook her head, probably thinking, as I did, that three bucks was a pretty steep price for slippers, lined with sheepskin or not. She gave me the money, and I took off for Chewling’s, glad to have an excuse to exercise my blues away. Walking through town in broad daylight was a heck of a lot more fun than walking through town in the black of night.

  Nobody was in the shoe store when I arrived. Mr. Meeks was nowhere to be seen, so I went over to the display of slippers to see if they still had the ones I wanted for Pa. They did. They’d also added some new slippers to the ladies’ shelf, and some of them didn’t hardly look like slippers at all. There was a pair of fluffy pink things with heels that looked to me as though they’d be far from comfortable. If I wanted to wear slippers, I’d prefer flat-heeled ones that were warm and cozy, not high-heeled toe-crushers. Clearly I wasn’t conversant with modern-day fashions. When it came to slippers, that was all right with me.

  “May I help you?” came a voice from behind my back. By that time, I was almost used to Firman Meeks creeping up on me. Maybe he couldn’t help it because the floor had a thick carpet on it. I acquitted him of attempting to frighten me, anyhow.

  I turned around and smiled at him. “Yes, please. My mother wants to buy those slippers for my father. Size eleven, please.” I pointed to the slippers in question.

  “Very well. Let me fetch the proper size from the back room.”

  So I sat in one of the seats provided for customers and rested my feet on the little stool the shoe-store clerks sat on when they were helping people on with their new shoes. When Firman Meeks came back, I decided I might as well ask him a blunt question. Heck, why not? Micah Tindall was in jail, Phil and the chief were both mad at me; why not irritate him, too?

  “Mr. Meeks, was Mr. Calhoun blackmailing you?” Then I felt my face flame. I wasn’t a deep thinker, especially when it came to
butting into other people’s business, but I wasn’t generally that blunt.

  He stood in front of me, a shoe box in his hands, gazing down upon me with an expression as blank as one of Mae Shenkel’s on his face. “My dear young woman, whatever are you talking about?”

  I felt at a disadvantage being seated while he stood, so I stood too. “I found your name on a list of people who were giving Mr. Calhoun money. I . . . well, he was an awful man and cheated people all the time. I figured he’d either given you a loan at an exorbitant interest rate or he was blackmailing you, and I wondered if I was right.” Suddenly feeling very alone in the store, I added, “The police will probably come by to question you about it, too.”

  “They will, will they?”

  “Well . . . maybe they won’t. They arrested Mr. Micah Tindall for the murders of both the Calhoun men.”

  “I see. Well, then, no matter what my answer might have been, I consider it quite impolite of you to have asked that question of me, Miss Blue, but I forgive you.”

  Gee, thanks, I thought. However, I’d been terribly boorish to the man, so I just said, “Thanks. Sorry to have asked such an . . . ugly question.”

  “That’s quite all right. Miss Jarvis has told me you’re an inquisitive young lady.”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling stupid and sad. “I am. Sometimes that’s not a very good quality.”

  He only smiled as he set the box of slippers on the counter. “Would you like me to wrap these in brown paper?”

  I thought about it. Unless I wanted to walk around our grocery store, I’d have to walk through it to get the slippers to the house, and I didn’t want Pa to see the box. On the other hand, a shoe box looked like a shoe box even when wrapped in brown paper. On the other other hand, if it was wrapped in brown paper, Pa wouldn’t know the box contained slippers in his size, would he? Therefore, I said, “Yes, please.”

  “Certainly. Just let me write out a receipt for you.”

  So I handed him the money, he put it in the cash register—a newer model than ours and not nearly so pretty or with such a lovely chinking sound—and wrote out a receipt. As I watched him write, a sick feeling crept into my tummy. I’d seen that handwriting before. Neat. Precise. Tiny. Spiky. Up-and-down. Not slanted one way or the other. Just like the handwriting on that note threatening Mr. Calhoun’s life if he didn’t stop doing what he was doing.

  “Um . . . ,” I said, and stopped talking.

  Mr. Meeks glanced up at me, tilted his head to one side, and then walked around the counter.

  “Um, what are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer me as he thoughtfully made his way to the front door. My heart jumped into my throat when I saw him lock it. Then he pulled the blinds on the window, and I got really scared. “Wait! What are you doing? My mother knows I’m here!”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t matter, Miss Blue,” said he, coming back to me. “I saw the dawn of recognition in your eyes, my dear, and we can’t have that, can we?”

  “What? What recognition? I didn’t recognize anything! What are you talking about?”

  “I think you know. I didn’t get this far in life without being a discerning individual. You, Miss Blue, are clever, but you have yet to learn discernment. I fear now you never will.”

  “What? What do you mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I tried to slide away from him, but his hand shot out like an angry rattlesnake and grabbed my wrist. When I lifted my arm with the intention of clocking him on the head with my fist, he grabbed that hand, too. Shoot, for such a scrawny guy, he was sure strong.

  I struggled like a fiend, but he held on tight, dragging me toward the door to the back room. I thought I might have a chance to race away from him when he let go of me to open the door, but I was wrong. Darned if he didn’t put both of my wrists together with one of his hands, which were clearly larger than I’d bargained on, and then grab a man’s belt from a nearby display. He belted my hands together so tightly behind my back, I feared for my circulation.

  If you think I was quiet as a lamb while all this was going on, you’d be wrong. I shouted and hollered like a crazy woman. After he got my wrists under control, he smacked me across the face so hard, my ears rang.

  “Please, Miss Blue. That noise is uncalled for. No one can hear you.” His voice was calm as a stagnant puddle.

  My senses reeling, I was unable to rebut this assertion, but I resisted when he attempted to drag me into the back room. “No!” I said, not very loudly due the aforementioned reeling-senses thing. “No!”

  “I fear you’re wrong about that. It’s unfortunate. I know you’re one of Miss Jarvis’s friends, and I truly regret taking a friend away from her, as I’d intended to marry her and settle down here. However, if you’ve discovered as much as you have in your unofficial capacity as an ordinary citizen, it looks as if I’ll have to be on my way again. This is very annoying, young woman.” The frown he gave me might have been bestowed by a frustrated first-grade teacher on a naughty child. “Not that I expect the police will ever find me. Not as stupid as they are. They aren’t as clever as you, are they, my dear?” His smile almost made me throw up. “But then, as we discussed before, you have yet to learn discernment.”

  I swallowed my nausea. “But why?” I asked. “I still don’t understand. What are you going to do with me?” I hadn’t liked that comment about depriving Betty Lou of a friend the least little bit.

  “I’ll have to leave you in the back room until I close the shop. Then, I fear, I shall have to take you out onto the desert and shoot you.”

  “Sh-shoot me?” I think I whimpered. “But why? It’s no matter to me if Mr. Calhoun gave you a loan or was blackmailing you. I don’t care. Anyhow, I told you they’ve arrested Mr. Tindall.”

  His smile gave me the creeps and the willies. “Ah, but you see, I do care. I had hoped to erase my Chicago past by coming to this backwater. God knows, men have run away from their pasts in the Wild West from time out of mind. But if you’ve uncovered evidence of my dealings with Mr. Calhoun, I fear the police, however dull, won’t be too far behind you. They’ll probably discover Mr. Tindall has an alibi or something and do some more digging. Especially with you having gone around goading them, as I’ve been told you’ve done.”

  As he spoke, he was tying my feet together with another belt. Then he stuffed me into a crevice between two rows of shelves jammed with shoe boxes.

  “You mean, you’re the mobster?”

  He gave me a funny look. “However did you come up with that word?”

  Oh, Lord. Me and my big mouth. But what the heck. He had me, and I really wanted to know the answers to some questions, so I decided to tell him. “I—I picked up a bunch of leaves when I stumbled over Herschel Calhoun’s body. When I emptied my pockets, I found a note among the leaves. In it he told somebody to keep paying him money or he’d expose him for the mobster he was. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Curse that idiot boy. And curse me, too, for not thinking to find that note and do away with it.”

  “You mean you actually were a mobster.”

  “More of an enforcer, actually. I’d get an order of execution and carry it out.” He shrugged. “It was a job.”

  “You? You were a hired assassin?” There went my mind, reeling again.

  “I suppose you could call my former occupation that of a hired assassin. It certainly paid well.”

  Something else occurred to me. “Are you the one who planted the gun in my brother-in-law’s house?”

  “Indeed, yes. The police at that time considered him a likely suspect.” He shook his head. “That wretched Calhoun boy. If he hadn’t butted in, this never would have happened.”

  “You’d have let Richard—and now Mr. Tindall—take the blame for a murder you committed?” I know it sounds idiotic, but I couldn’t conceive of a person doing that to another person. Yet I was talking to a self-confessed murderer even as I spoke the sentence.

  “Yes.”

/>   And he grabbed a rag from somewhere or other and tied it over my mouth. Guess that was it as far as questions went, at least for now. Probably forever, if I couldn’t figure how to get myself out of this mess.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I struggled like the very devil, but those belts were buckled really, really tightly. There were also no lights on in the back room, which smelled like shoes. That made sense, but I didn’t think I’d ever be able to enjoy a pair of new shoes again in my lifetime. Provided my lifetime lasted longer than the closing hour at Chewling’s. I also decided I’d been in the dark entirely too much lately. So to speak.

  Good Lord, what to do? What to do?

  Well, not a whole lot, actually. However, not for Annabelle Blue to go to her doom without fighting as hard as she could for her freedom first. I might be stupid about blurting out the wrong things at the wrong time to the wrong people, but my instinct for survival was as alive and well as I was, and I hoped to keep both of us around a good deal longer than Firman Meeks wanted.

  Therefore, although I couldn’t see a blessed thing, I gently lowered myself to the floor and scooted on my butt to where I thought a back door to the shoe store might be, then stood up. I was wrong the first three or four times, but managed to find a doorknob at long last. But what door did it belong to? Bother. If it was the door to the shoe-store innards, I’d be okay if I opened it and flopped out like a landed trout as long as someone was in the store with Mr. Meeks. If not, he’d just shove me back into the shoe-storage room and tie me up even tighter.

  I stood there in blind panic—blind because there was no light in the room—and cogitated for a second. Then it occurred to me that probably the door to the salesroom wasn’t locked, as opposed to the door to the alleyway outside in back. This might prove to be a blessing and a curse both. If the doorknob twisted without any trouble, I just wouldn’t open the door. However, if I ever did find the door to the alley, how the heck was I supposed to get it unlocked if it was locked, and why wouldn’t it be? Heck, even in Rosedale, we merchants took precautions.