by Donis Casey
“All right, then.”
Martha nodded and took an awkward leave of him. Streeter sat on his bike for a long time, with the crowd flowing around him like water as he watched her walk away. He felt a slight irritation of his own. He could never figure out the right thing to say to her to save his life.
***
Mike Ed Beams had worked for the Yeager Transfer and Storage Company for exactly twenty years, since it had operated out of a hastily constructed wooden building about a fifth the size of the one in which it was now housed. He had worked his way up from mover to teamster to clerk to manager. And now, since Lester Yeager’s illness, he was to all intents and purposes running the business all by himself. Kenneth Crawford may have been part owner of the business, but as far as Mike Ed was concerned, that was just on paper. Kenneth didn’t have the sense God gave a goose, and Mike Ed felt under no obligation to pay attention to him, at least not while Lester Yeager was still alive. As for what he was going to do after Lester passed, he didn’t really know. He liked his job, and he was good at it. He didn’t want to quit, but working for Kenneth would be intolerable. His best hope was that Kenneth would hold true to form and be too impatient to attend to the daily nuts and bolts of running the business, and either leave it to his wife, Olivia, or to Mike Ed himself.
Mike Ed had never worked for a woman before, but he had known Olivia since she was a little girl, and he admired her grasp of business. Taking orders from her was certainly a better option than working for Kenneth.
He was sitting in his office on the warehouse floor, going over shipping orders and pondering this very problem, when someone knocked on his door and startled him out of his reverie.
He had only met Mrs. Yeager’s relatives a couple of times in passing over the years, but he had heard that her kin were in town. So when he looked at the women through the glass in his office door, he immediately recognized the older one as Mrs. Yeager’s sister, Mrs. Tucker. She was colored differently, but otherwise, the woman’s face resembled Mrs. Yeager’s quite a bit. Mrs. Yeager had another dark-haired sister who lived in Arizona, Mike Ed knew, but there was no mistaking which one this was. The eldest of the Gunn sisters had a direct gaze that could bore a hole right through you. The younger woman was obviously Mrs. Tucker’s daughter, but he didn’t know the well-dressed man who accompanied them.
Mike Ed opened the door and ushered his visitors into the office. The two women took the seats before his desk, all the while exchanging pleasantries and bemoaning poor Lester’s condition. The man shook his hand and quietly sat himself in a chair in a corner, which told Mike Ed who was in charge of this expedition. When they were well settled and all introductions properly made, Mrs. Tucker launched right into the reason for their visit without waiting for an invitation.
“Mr. Beams, am I right in thinking that you have a master key to the rented cold storage lockers back there in the back of the warehouse?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. Did Miz Yeager send you to fetch something for her?”
Alafair hesitated and glanced at Martha. For an instant, she considered saying yes, since this was such a logical assumption. But that would only get her into one locker, and she wanted to inspect all six of the ones big enough to hide a body.
Martha relieved Alafair of the decision to lie. “No, sir, Mr. Beams,” she said. “As you’ve probably realized by now, my cousin’s husband, Kenneth, is overdue to return from his latest business trip.”
“Please call me Mike Ed, ma’am. And, yes, I know about Kenneth. It’s not unusual for him to be late from these trips.” He wondered what this had to do with anything.
“Olivia wired the companies on his itinerary list and he never called on a single one,” Martha told him.
“Oh?”
“Were you by any chance aware that Olivia thinks that Kenneth owes money to Buck Collins?”
Mike Ed drew a sharp breath in spite of himself. “I hate to hear that.”
Alafair took up the tale. “My sister and I had a little walk-through of the facilities here on Wednesday, while we were at the fair. It was real quiet, and nobody was on the warehouse floor, so we didn’t figure to be interrupting anything at the time. When we got over by the lockers, I found a gold collar stud on the floor, exactly like the ones that my sister tells me Kenneth likes to wear. Now, both my sister and my niece say that Kenneth hates the cold worse than anything. So if that stud belongs to him, how did it end up there? And since it turns out that no one knows where Kenneth is, I propose to have a look in those lockers.”
Mike Ed was aghast that this perfectly conventional-looking woman would come up with such a notion. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, Miz Tucker, I’ve got to say that it’s mighty unlikely. There are people in and out of those lockers all the time. And if you fear that something evil has happened to Kenneth Crawford, why not just go to the police?”
“I don’t want to put words to what I fear. I agree with you that it’s mighty unlikely. My evidence is pretty thin, and I don’t believe that the police would take me very seriously at all. I don’t want to be upsetting my niece or sister with my suspicions, either. If I could have figured out a way for us to check inside the lockers without anybody knowing, we would have. But aside from busting in to the place after dark, we couldn’t come up with anything. Lester thinks mighty highly of you, Mike Ed, so I feel safe in telling you my suspicions. You know what Kenneth is like, and you know Buck Collins. All I want to do is have a quick gander inside the lockers that are big enough for a side of beef.”
Mike Ed shot an incredulous glance toward McCoy, but if he was expecting an expression of male solidarity against this female illogic, he was disappointed. McCoy perched his elbows on the arms of the chair and gave Mike Ed a pleasant and totally unrevealing smile. Mike Ed slouched forward with his elbows on his desk and eyeballed the woman across from him with extreme skepticism. “Or a body?”
“Like I said, I don’t want to put words to my fears. I hate to be bothering you, but it should only take five minutes to have a peek, and then my fears would be laid to rest.”
Mike Ed flopped back in the chair. “Well, Miz Tucker, this is the most dad-blamed wild notion I’ve heard in a long time, pardon me for saying so. If I didn’t have such high regard for the Yeagers and their kin, I’d be inclined to send you packing. But just to set your mind at ease, I’ll take you back there and you can examine the citizens of Enid’s slabs of meat to your heart’s content.”
Alafair nodded and stood, not at all surprised that this strange errand had gone just the way she wanted it to. “Five minutes, Mike Ed. I’ll not keep you longer than that.”
Martha and McCoy trailed behind the manager and Alafair as they trekked across the warehouse floor, weaving between trucks and bales and boxes of goods on their way to the refrigerated rooms on the far end of the building. All the while Martha was wondering how Alafair managed with such regularity to get people to do whatever unlikely thing she asked of them. If Martha herself had been as straightforward with Mike Ed Beams, would he have indulged her like he had her mother? Somehow Martha didn’t think so. Alafair had a talent for carrying people away on the tide of her certainty.
Or maybe it was just that folks were loath to say no to someone who reminded them so forcefully of their own mothers.
She gave Streeter a sidelong glance to judge his reaction, but he was sauntering along as calmly as if he were escorting his best girl on a stroll in the park. Her mouth quirked.
Mike Ed obviously wasn’t taking Alafair’s fear seriously. As they walked along, Alafair was quizzing him about his wife and children, and he seemed more than happy to fill her in on the brilliance of his two little boys.
He unlocked the heavy outer door to the first cold room with one of the large keys that dangled from the iron key ring he had retrieved from his desk. “Now, it’s mighty cold in here, ladies,” he warned. “I reckon we’d better step lively.” He stood back and allowed them to precede h
im into the dim interior, then stepped in after them and pulled the chain of the single lightbulb that hung at the end of a long woven cord suspended from the high ceiling. Six walk-in lockers lined one wall. The other lockers along the other three walls ranged from the size of an icebox to a mailbox.
Martha gasped at the shock of the cold, which was a mistake. The frigid air seared her throat and lungs. She wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. McCoy offered his suit coat without a word, and she draped it over her shoulders.
Alafair exclaimed at the temperature, but Mike Ed didn’t seem bothered. “Now, ladies, this first big locker belongs to Miz James. Her son Marquis is a newspaperman down in New Orleans. Every year Miz James buys a whole cow from one of the ranchers around here, and the butcher cuts it up for her into handy pieces.” The locker was only about as large as a standard armoire, lined with shelves that were packed with brown paper-wrapped bundles of meat. Mike Ed said nothing, but his expression was just a shade condescending when Alafair backed out. He closed and locked the door.
He opened the second door. “This one is rented by Mr. Edwards, who likes to hunt anything in season. He’s got ducks and rabbits and sides of venison in here that he dresses himself. I expect he hasn’t bought a piece of meat in years.” This locker was deeper and wider than the first. Paper-wrapped pieces of meat lined shelves on one side, but several long deer haunches hung from wicked-looking hooks in the ceiling.
After the women satisfied themselves as to the contents, Mike Ed continued his narrative as he slid his master key into the third lock. “Now this locker belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Yeager themselves. They’ve got a couple of nice sides of beef as well as pork and every kind of poultry. Miz Tucker, you might want to take your sister along a nice hen for supper.”
“Thank you, Mike Ed. I believe supper is up to my sister’s housekeeper these days.”
“I must say, Mr. Beams,” McCoy interjected, “I’m impressed. Perhaps before I leave town, I might talk to you about renting one of these smaller lockers myself.”
Martha shot him a puzzled glance. When he was in Enid, McCoy lived at a hotel.
Mike Ed was just glad to know that the man talked. “Well, I’d be proud to tell you about it, Mr. McCoy. In fact, this fourth locker here may be available before long. It’s leased out to old Mr. Livingston, but he’s been out of town for a few weeks looking for some land to buy closer to the City. Now this is one of the bigger ones…”
He swung the door open.
Kenneth’s body was sitting on the floor, propped against the shelves that lined the back wall, facing the door with eyes wide open. He was leaning slightly askew, his arms out at an odd angle. His celluloid collar was missing the front studs and had popped open. It stuck out on either side of his neck, like wings.
Both the women shrieked, and even Mike Ed couldn’t suppress a startled yip. He slammed the locker door, and McCoy seized Martha and Alafair by their arms and hustled them from the room.
The four of them stood for one horrified second outside the cold room door in a knot.
“I’ll be go to hell,” Mike Ed finally managed. “I’ll be go to hell!”
Martha could hardly catch her breath, and Streeter looked ashen, she noticed. Alafair herself may have instigated this activity, but she appeared to be as taken aback as the rest of them.
Mike Ed swung his wide-eyed gaze toward Alafair. “How did you know?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. It was just an idea. Oh, poor Olivia!”
“We’d better call the police,” McCoy said. “Right now.”
***
Enid’s Chief of Police John Burns appeared to be studying the body of Kenneth Crawford as it lay awkwardly on the warehouse floor, but he wasn’t really aware of what he was looking at. Instead, he was wondering how it was that Buck Collins was here.
Somehow, Collins had found out that a body had been discovered in a rented meat locker before the deceased’s family had even been notified, and had managed to get himself down here at practically the same time as the law. Collins had separated himself from the crowd of policemen as well as from the horrified civilians who had made the discovery. He was alone but for Hanlon, his constant shadow, bodyguard, and sometime chauffeur, who stood two or three respectful paces behind his boss.
Burns shook his head. Collins either had the best spy network in the state, or he was a mind reader.
“I don’t see any wounds,” Burns said to nobody in particular. He looked up, his brown eyes fastening on Buck Collins’ elegant figure. Collins met his gaze, cool and seemingly as perplexed as the chief himself.
***
From her position in the shadows, Alafair peered out from between McCoy and Martha and sized up the man talking to the chief. So this was the notorious Buck Collins, up close. Collins was taller than most, and far too thin, but he seemed to take up a lot of space, just the same. His gray-streaked hair, the color of polished oak, was parted neatly on the side and shining with pomade. He was dressed in a dark silk suit and a snowy tailored white shirt. The tastefully patterned tie sported a pearl tie pin. Collins grasped a bowler hat in one hand, and his wrist in the opposite hand, his stance relaxed as he regarded the chief.
“How do you expect Kenneth Crawford ended up dead in a meat locker, Buck?” Burns’ tone was mild.
Alafair couldn’t read Collins’ expression when the chief questioned him. He didn’t seem distressed.
“I have no idea, John,” he said. His Irish accent sounded more pronounced now than it had when he spoke before the parade.
“His folks tell me that Crawford may have been in to you for some money.”
Collins shrugged.
“So it’s true?”
“A lot of people are in to me for money. I’m not inclined to kill my clients before they pay me back.”
“So you’re just as puzzled as the rest of us as to how this happened.”
“I am. Why on earth would I kill Crawford, and then put his body in a meat locker, of all things, where he was bound to be found sooner or later? I’m not stupid, Chief.”
“Nobody accused you of that, Buck. So, being so smart, you got any theories?”
Collins shrugged again. “In the course of business a man can make a number of enemies, and young Mr. Crawford was rash in his dealings, I understand.”
“Not unlike yourself,” Burns observed.
A meager smile crossed Collins’ face. “Perhaps. Though less successful about it, it seems.”
Burns looked over at Mike Ed and raised an eyebrow. “Who all can get hold of the key to this here locker?”
Alafair could hear the slight sigh that escaped Mike Ed before he answered. “There are two master keys, Chief, one of which I keep in my desk in the office yonder. That desk ain’t locked, nor is my office, during business hours. There are times when nobody is in there. I reckon it would be easy enough to sneak in and filch the key for a spell without me knowing it.”
“You said there are two keys. Who has the other one?”
“Lester Yeager. Of course, he’s presently on his death bed. I don’t know where he keeps his key, or whom he might have given it to.”
Burns nodded and withdrew a small pad and pencil from his breast pocket. There was a moment of silence as he jotted down a few words.
“Buck, what are you doing here?” he said at length. “I don’t recall sending anybody to fetch you. This fellow’s widow hasn’t even been notified yet.”
“Coincidence, Chief. Just damn lucky coincidence. Pardon my unfortunate language, ladies.” Collins made a smooth little bow in the women’s direction before turning back to Burns. “I’ve been at the agriculture exhibit in the Collins Building most of the day. Mr. Hanlon here was driving me down Grand on my way home, when I spotted you and your cohorts getting out of your police cars and entering the warehouse with some urgency. I confess I was curious, and I also wondered if I could be of any assistance, so I asked Mr. Hanlon to stop. The policeman you have posted
at the door was reluctant to let me in at first, but imagine my surprise when Patrolman Wilmot informed me that a body had been found in a meat locker and perhaps I’d better come in.”
Alafair noted with interest that Burns slid a narrow glance at one of the policemen standing by the wall. Wilmot, she presumed. His actions had not endeared him to the chief. If Burns was angry, though, he took some pains not to show it.
He turned back toward Collins. “I understand that Crawford and your boy Ellery were friends.”
“Ellery has been in Baltimore for the past several weeks. Crawford was last seen alive a couple of weeks ago, I believe.”
“Believe we’ll check that out, Buck.”
“As you wish, John.”
Burns nodded toward the door. “Yonder comes Dr. Lamerton. Wilmot, escort these people up to the office.” He gestured toward Alafair’s group. “Y’all just wait up there and I’ll come up directly. I have some questions I want to ask you. Buck, you can go. I’ll be around to your house later this afternoon.”
“I’m at your service, Chief.”
“Good. Now, let’s all stand aside and let the Doc do his business.”
Alafair took Martha’s hand and led the way as Patrolman Wilmot shepherded the four of them up the short flight of stairs leading to Mike Ed’s office. She glanced over her shoulder to see Collins and his driver walking toward the exit. Chief Burns, hands on hips, was watching them go. He snorted.
He didn’t speak very loudly, but Alafair just caught the word he mumbled to himself before he turned to greet the doctor.
It was “coincidence.”
***
Alafair crept into Lester’s room, intending to leave him undisturbed if he was sleeping. She had volunteered to tell him about Kenneth’s shocking end, but she was unwilling to wake him to do it. Such unpleasant news could wait until he awoke on his own.