Charles Simmons called out to Billy Oswald as he walked by. “Wait a minute, mister. You thinking of setting off them crackers?”
“That was my idea. Who’re you?”
Simmons flashed his badge. “I better look them over.”
Sheriff Lens quickly interceded, sensing trouble. “We got no law against it here, Mr. Simmons. If they’re careful, we let it go.”
The government man grudgingly handed back the package of firecrackers. “Okay, but be careful with them.” He got back into the car and closed the door.
“I’ll see you in Shinn Corners,” I told the sheriff as he pulled away.
“Cops,” Dora Springsteen said. “All they want to do is cause trouble.” She and I hung back as Billy walked across the grass of the town square. I watched him break the seal on the package and take out one of the medium-sized firecrackers. He stood it on the grass and reached into the pocket of his baggy shirt for a box of wooden matches. “Go ahead and do it, Billy!” his brother yelled. “Don’t make such a big production out of it!”
Billy crouched down, his broad back to us, and tried to light the match. He turned in frustration and I saw him strike it again along the side of the box. Nothing happened. Finally, on the third try, the match broke in two. Billy stood up, frustrated.
“Come on, damn it!” Teddy Oswald shouted.
Billy took out another match and again failed to light it. Finally, Teddy ran forward and grabbed the matchbox from him. He took out another match, lit it on the first try, and bent to ignite the fuse as Billy walked away, grumbling. “They’re my firecrackers, Teddy. At least you could let me light them.”
I saw the instant flash as the fuse ignited and I knew something was wrong. Teddy must have, too, but he had no chance to move before it was too late. There was an ear-shattering explosion and a fiery flare that seemed to engulf Teddy as it swept out to catch Billy, too.
Then people were running and screaming, and as the smoke cleared we saw them both on the ground.
Teddy Oswald was killed instantly. His brother Billy suffered burns on his back and a possible concussion. I treated him as best I could at the scene and an ambulance rushed him to Pilgrim Memorial. Sheriff Lens and the others had heard the blast before they were out of town and hurried back to the scene. As soon as he saw what had happened, he decided to remain with me and send one of his deputies to Shinn Corners with the Prohibition agents.
“What do you think happened, Doc?” he asked as the ambulance pulled away.
“Damned if I know. A defective firecracker, I suppose. Couldn’t be anything else.”
The sheriff gathered up the scattered remains of the package of firecrackers. They’d been far enough from the blast so that none of them were set off, but he handled them gingerly nonetheless.
“Look at that hole!” he said as we gaped at the spot where the explosion had occurred. He examined one of the firecrackers in his hand and shook his head. “You know something, Doc? I think what went off was half a stick of dynamite. It would be just about the right size.”
“How could that be? I watched Billy unwrap the package myself. It was sealed at the factory.”
“What about the fuse?”
I nodded, remembering. “It flared instantly, like those long ones they use for setting off charges at mines and construction sites. Only it wasn’t longer than a couple of inches, like these others.”
“Doc, I could believe one mistake at the factory, but here we got two. The wrong explosive and the wrong fuse. What does that sound like to you?”
“Murder,” I admitted. “But how?”
“You’re the expert on these things.”
“There’s something else,” I decided. “If it was murder, were both brothers the intended victims, or just Billy?”
“Billy?”
“He opened the package and tried to light that fuse, but he was having problems so Teddy took it away from him and lit it himself.”
Sheriff Lens nodded. “I guess we better go talk to Billy at the hospital.”
The staff doctors had done a good job of treating the burns on Billy’s back, but he was still in some pain. He lay on his stomach, his head turned toward us. He was obviously in grief. “I can’t believe Teddy’s dead. Who would do a thing like that to us?”
“How about Max Webber?” the sheriff suggested. “You accused him of throwin’ that rock through the window.”
“Throwing a rock and killing somebody aren’t the same thing, Sheriff. I can’t believe even Webber would do a thing like that.”
The sheriff had brought along the paper wrapper from the fireworks package, printed in bold red letters with the words: One dozen Big Buster Firecrackers. Handle with Care. “Could you show me how you opened this package, Billy?”
“I just tore the seal and ripped one side of the paper so I could take one out. I never gave no thought to it. Sam was watching me, weren’t you, Sam?”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “He didn’t choose a certain firecracker, if that’s what you’re thinking, Sheriff. He just reached in without looking and pulled one out. Then he put down the package and the others spilled out on the grass.”
Sheriff Lens nodded. “Is there anyone else who might have a grudge against you, Billy? You gotta realize that if that match had lit you’d be dead instead of your brother.”
“No one could have known I’d use those firecrackers instead of Teddy,” Billy insisted. “Just last night Teddy set off some skyrockets. Could it have been a mistake at the factory?”
“We think there was half a stick of dynamite in there, Billy. And the fuse was the wrong kind, too. Doc says it flared right up when Teddy lit it.”
“I wish it’d been me,” Billy muttered into his pillow.
We left him then, because Sheriff Lens wanted to examine the rest of the firecrackers and I wanted to pay a call on Max Webber.
I found him at his home on Maple Street, a few blocks from the town square, sitting on the porch reading the morning newspaper. He was a large man who more often than not had the butt of a cigar in one corner of his mouth. He was a community leader, but I hated to think that the future of Northmont depended on someone like Webber.
“Hello there, Dr. Sam,” he greeted me, putting down the paper. “I hear there was an accident down at the square. My wife and daughter walked down to see what happened.”
“Weren’t you interested enough to go, Mr. Webber?”
He took the dead cigar from his mouth and gazed at it distastefully before replying. “The legs been bothering me. I don’t get around like I used to.”
“Teddy Oswald was killed in an explosion,” I said. “His brother Billy was injured.”
“That’s too bad.”
“There was dynamite in a firecracker, near as we can figure.”
Webber grunted. “Awful mistake to make at the factory.”
“Maybe it didn’t happen at the factory. The brothers seemed to think you were harassing them, trying to force them to sell the garage to you.”
“That’s nonsense. I made them a reasonable offer for the property and they declined to sell. The matter is closed.”
“Did you throw a stone through their window last night?”
“Certainly not!”
He sounded sincere, but so did a good many liars I’d known. I saw his family strolling back from the direction of the town square and decided there was nothing more to be learned there. “The sheriff may want to talk to you,” I told him in parting.
“He knows where to find me. Either here or at my office.”
I went down to the jail and found Sheriff Lens at his desk. He was no sort of scientific detective, but I had to admit he’d done a first-rate job on those firecrackers. He’d cut off all the fuses and arranged them in two rows of six each. Then he’d taken a bit of each fuse and lit it to determine how fast it would burn.
“They’re all slow-burning, Doc,” he said. “Just like they’re supposed to be. And the firecrackers ar
e filled with the right kind of powder. There’s no dynamite or anything else unusual here.”
I nodded. “So it was only chance that Billy selected the one deadly firecracker. You can’t make a murder case out of that, Sheriff.”
“Unless it’s one of your impossible crimes, done up so clever it don’t even look like a crime.” He swept the fuses into the desk drawer. “Well, I’d better get back over to Shinn Corners and see what them federal guys are up to. Want to ride along?”
“I think I’ll take another look at the Oswald garage. Then maybe I’ll join you. I still hope we can make it up to April’s cottage before the day is over.”
The garage was locked up when I reached it, and I was about to leave when I saw someone in the alley toward the back. It was Dora Springsteen and she had her hand through the glass of the broken window.
“What are you up to?” I asked, coming up beside her.
She withdrew her hand, careful not to cut it on the jagged glass. “Just testing a theory of mine. Want to hear it?”
“Sure. I love theories.”
“That stone through the window didn’t do much damage last night. But what if the idea wasn’t merely to break the glass? What if the idea was to break into the garage?”
“It would be a tight squeeze through that six-inch hole.”
“But my hand can go through. And it can reach the latch on the window.”
Suddenly I was interested. I tried it myself and saw that she was right. The window could have been unlatched and opened to admit an intruder, then closed again and latched afterward in the same manner. “Why would anyone want to break in?” I asked.
“Those fireworks were kept in that unlocked cabinet. Someone could have climbed through the window and substituted a tampered package. It would be easy enough to cut a seal from a second package and glue it in place on the tampered one—if the person had the time.”
I shook my head—in admiration, but she misunderstood.
“Well, how do you think it was done?”
“Maybe the way you suggest.”
“By Max Webber?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” I admitted. “I stopped by to see him earlier, but he denied everything.”
“He wanted them out of this building.”
“I know that.”
“Do you think Billy is safe at the hospital?”
“I think so. Even Webber wouldn’t be foolish enough to try anything else so soon. But I might suggest to Sheriff Lens that he keep a deputy there overnight.”
She looked relieved. “I’d appreciate that.”
I left her at the garage and drove out of town, heading for Shinn Corners. Dora might have a point about the window, but planting a dynamite bomb where anybody might use it seemed a heartless and unprofitable murder method to me. Before I was convinced, I’d need a method by which the killer knew exactly what he’d accomplish, and that seemed impossible given the events I’d witnessed with my own eyes.
When the warehouse came into view, I saw a big truck pulled up to the loading platform. The agent named Ready was in his shirt-sleeves, directing a half dozen men who were carrying out cases of the bootlegged Scotch. I parked and walked over to him. “How’s it going?” I asked.
“We’re coming along.”
“Heavy work for a holiday.”
“We work when we have to. Criminals don’t take holidays and neither do we.”
I went on inside, looking for Sheriff Lens. The other Prohibition agent, Simmons, was directing work at that end and I was surprised to see that more than half the bootlegged whisky had been removed already. “It’s our third truckload,” he confirmed. “We work fast.”
“Where’s the sheriff?”
“He was here and then he left—said something about going fishing.”
I nodded. “Good day for it.”
Sheriff Lens had never fished a day in his life.
I went back outside and walked around the warehouse. There was no sign of the deputy who was supposed to be on guard.
If the sheriff hadn’t gone fishing, he was still around somewhere, and that meant his car was probably still around, too. I scanned the tall weeds and underbrush in the distance, searching for something I was afraid to find.
Then I saw the unmistakable sign of tire tracks. They’d left a recent trail through uncut grass, heading toward a dry stream bed just this side of the underbrush. I walked another ten feet and saw the rear end of the sheriff’s car sticking out from the depression in the landscape.
“Hold it right there, Dr. Hawthorne,” a voice behind me said.
Before I turned, I knew there was a gun on me. It was in James Ready’s hand. “Am I violating any laws?” I asked him.
“Get back to the warehouse, wise guy. If you’re so anxious to find the sheriff, I’ll take you to him.”
I had little choice, so I raised my hands and walked ahead of him to the warehouse. Simmons was waiting for me, also with a drawn gun, and he motioned me into a small office at the front of the building.
Sheriff Lens was tied to a chair and gagged. His deputy, a man named Oscar Frawly, was on the floor, apparently unconscious. I knew what was coming next and when I felt the sudden movement behind me I tried to roll with the blow.
The next thing I knew I was on the floor with a splitting pain in the back of my head. But I was still conscious, though I remained still while the door to the office was closed and locked from outside. Then I gradually sat up, rubbing my head.
Sheriff Lens grunted through his gag. I got it out of his mouth and he grimaced. “These guys aren’t Prohibition agents.”
“I figured as much.”
“They’re bootleggers tryin’ to get the stuff outa here before the real government agents show up tomorrow. I recognized one of the truck drivers from a Wanted poster in my office and then they jumped me. They hit Oscar pretty hard.”
I bent to examine the fallen deputy. “He’ll be all right. He’s coming around now.”
“Once they leave, we’ll have to get to a telephone and call the state police.”
“We might not be alive to do that,” I warned him.
“Yeah.”
I untied the sheriff and we worked over Frawly together. His color was good and I wasn’t too worried about him. “What happened?” he asked when he was fully conscious.
“One of those hoods hit you with the butt of his gun,” the sheriff told him. “Doc thinks they’re going to kill us.”
Outside we heard the truck starting up. Almost immediately another one pulled in. “This’ll be the last load,” we heard one of the men shout through the thin partition.
“Any ideas?” I asked Frawly.
“They took my gun.” He felt in his pockets. “All I got’s a firecracker.”
“A what?” Sheriff Lens asked, unbelieving.
“I was settin’ off a few of them over in the field. It’s the Fourth of July, you know.”
“Give me the firecracker,” I said. “Quickly!”
It was smaller than those the Oswald brothers had, but I figured it would have to do. “What you goin’ to try?” the sheriff asked.
“When I light this, we all hit that door together. If this goes off at the same time, they might think we’ve got a gun. It’s our only hope.”
The door shattered under our combined weight and the firecracker gave a satisfactory crack. The man nearest us dropped the case he was carrying and raised his hands. “I’ve got a gun, Simmons!” Sheriff Lens shouted. “Throw down your weapons.”
Frawly grabbed the nearest man and wrestled him to the floor, disarming him. Others were raising their hands, and the fight seemed over before it had begun. Except that Simmons and Ready weren’t there. They were outside, running for their car.
The sheriff ran out of the warehouse after them, waving one of the confiscated guns, and for an instant I was sure that foolish act would make him a dead man. The false Prohibition agents had already started their car, heading it dir
ectly at him. But he held his ground, firing at their tires, and in the last instant the car swerved, hitting the front end of the waiting truck and almost toppling over.
“And this isn’t even my county,” Sheriff Lens muttered as he ran up to the car with the gun ready.
Simmons and Ready crawled out, bloody and defeated, their hands in the air.
“That was good work, Sheriff,” I told him. “Your county or not.”
“I wasn’t about to let them escape,” he told me. “I think these are the guys who killed Teddy Oswald.”
After the local authorities took over, we finally were able to drive over to April’s cottage on Chester Lake. It was there, sitting in big wooden lawn chairs near the water’s edge, that we listened to the sheriff’s theory of the case. April had cold lemonade for everyone and Vera Lens had brought some homemade cookies along. It was a relaxing time while we watched the sailboats on the lake and waited for April’s dinner, which promised to be something spectacular.
“You see,” Sheriff Lens was saying, “neither Teddy nor Billy was the specific intended victim. All they wanted was an explosion, with some injuries, so’s I’d stay in Northmont while they went to the warehouse. They figured one guard could be dealt with easy enough if he became suspicious, as long as I was kept away. So they stopped the Oswald brothers and made a pretense of examining those fireworks. Of course, the Prohibition Bureau has nothing to do with fireworks, and they knew it. But while he was examining the package, Simmons substituted a doctored package he had with him. It was just luck that the dynamite was in the first cracker Billy tried to light, but Simmons knew they’d set off the whole batch pretty quick. First or last, the odds were someone would be killed or injured. That’s all they wanted.”
Vera took a long drink of lemonade and looked sorrowfully at the water.
“They had to clean out that warehouse before the real Prohibition agents arrived. And they couldn’t let anything stop them.”
I got up and strolled down by the water. After a few moments April came to join me. “What’s the matter, Sam?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it something the sheriff said?”
Nothing Is Impossible: Further Problems for Dr. Sam Hawthorne Page 5