by Donis Casey
Hanlon dropped the man’s arm like it was on fire. “Shot?” he repeated.
The man grabbed his boater off his head, waved it around a bit in wild excitement, then plopped it back on before he ran off, hollering over his shoulder, “He’s a crazy man! He keeps yelling, ‘Zip is dead’!”
Alafair emitted a cry of distress. “Oh, no! Can it be?”
She looked up at Hanlon, who was frozen to the sidewalk, white as chalk. Suddenly he ripped off his chauffeur’s cap, threw it to the ground, and spewed forth a string of curses that would have caused Alafair to faint dead away had she understood a single word. Then he took off for the Collins Building at a run, with Alafair right on his heels.
***
Hanlon hesitated at the bottom of the stairs leading into the exhibit hall, and Alafair ran into his back. He absently pulled her around to his side by her arm, and they stood there for a long moment, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. A .44 pistol lay discarded next to the wall. Buck Collins was writhing around on the floor, wailing in agony, clutching his bloody legs. Four or five burly farmers were holding down a flailing, manlike creature who kept howling, “You killed my dog!”
***
In her desperation to reach her mother, Martha nearly leaped out of the sidecar while McCoy was still roaring toward the crowd milling around the ambulance parked askew in the street in front of the Collins Building. McCoy grabbed her hand and snatched at the brake, alarmed.
“Look, honey! You can relax,” he yelled over the engine noise, “there’s your mother right there. She’s all right!”
Alafair was standing on the sidewalk, alone, watching men carry Pee Wee out on a stretcher and load him onto the ambulance. Hanlon was nowhere to be seen. Martha rushed up and threw her arms around Alafair’s neck, nearly weeping with relief, but Alafair was too distracted to take much notice of her distress. “I’m fine, sugar. I’m fine. Where’s Grace? Is she behaving herself?”
Martha ripped off her helmet and goggles, and her dark hair cascaded over her shoulders. “She’s fine. Lu has her. What’s happening?”
“Good. Oh, kids, it’s such an awful thing! There was a big explosion at the well and Zip Kolocek and some other poor fellow were killed. Pee Wee got it into his head that Mr. Collins was behind the blast and galloped all the way in to Enid on a horse, hunted Collins out, and shot him in the legs!”
“Good Lord!” McCoy exclaimed, and Martha said, “Did you see the shooting, Ma?” But Alafair was unaware of the interruption and plowed on.
“They took Collins off a while ago. I don’t know how bad he’s hurt. Pee Wee’s hurt, too, in the explosion. He got himself all the way here from Garber on horseback, but he looks like he’s been gnawed on by wolves. Zip! That poor child! I can’t hardly believe it.”
Martha seized her mother’s arm and urged her away from the scene. “Mama, come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“Come on, Mrs. Tucker,” McCoy said. “Why don’t we go sit down at the Owl Drug for a minute and catch our breath? Get something to drink. Tell us all about it from the beginning.”
The look in Alafair’s eyes was still distracted, and her cheeks a hectic red, but she seemed to approve of McCoy’s suggestion. Her head bobbed up and down. “Yes, that’s a good idea. I could use a few minutes to catch my breath.”
Martha shot McCoy a grateful look as they each took one of Alafair’s hands and steered her down the street toward the drugstore.
***
By the time Alafair had related the events of the afternoon to the two young people and to several ravenously interested drugstore employees, she had calmed down considerably. In fact, she was feeling subdued, depressed by the thought that happy, innocent Zip Kolocek was blown to bits. She hoped against hope that Pee Wee was so rattled by the blast that he was imagining something that wasn’t true.
“Why is Pee Wee so sure Mr. Collins blew up the well?” Martha asked.
Alafair shrugged. “I guess he’s been convinced by the popular opinion that Mr. Collins is behind every unlawful event that has occurred in Garfield County since the Run.”
“But you don’t think so?” McCoy asked.
“Of course she doesn’t.” Martha struggled to keep the sarcasm out of her tone.
She didn’t entirely succeed, because Alafair gave her an ironic smile. “Here’s the question, hon. Who stands to gain something from these deaths? Now, Kenneth owed Mr. Collins a lot of money. Mr. Collins will get his money back one way or another whether Kenneth is alive or dead. Seems to me that killing Kenneth and then pressuring Olivia to repay the debt just makes life a whole lot more complicated for Mr. Collins than it needs to be.” She gave her Coca-Cola a desultory stir with her straw. “And what earthly benefit would it be to him to blow up a couple of innocent drillers and a dog? He might be as spiteful as your uncle says, but he’s sure smart enough not to make unnecessary trouble for himself.”
“I’m guessing those drillers getting killed was an accident. I’d bet that if anybody was supposed to get killed, it was Pee Wee,” McCoy offered. “And as for Kenneth, maybe he knew some awful secret about Collins and threatened to tell, and Collins had him killed to shut him up.”
Alafair nodded. “That could be. It’d have to be a pretty awful secret to scare somebody as cool as Buck Collins.”
McCoy took up the position of devil’s advocate. “What about Nickolls? Could he have a reason to want Kenneth out of the way?”
“Well, I might just be persuaded that Pee Wee wanted Kenneth out of his hair, but I’ll never believe he had anything to do with killing Zip. It was plain as a pig on a sofa that he loved that boy.”
“Maybe one death didn’t have anything to do with the other,” Martha said. “Could be one person killed Kenneth and somebody else altogether murdered the other fellows.”
Alafair turned her head and regarded Martha thoughtfully. “Now, there’s an idea.”
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” McCoy stated. “I’m betting that Collins’ bodyguard, Hanlon, had a hand in one or both murders. He’s always lurking around in the background. He made friends with Zip, who he’d never cross paths with in the normal course of things. Maybe he was sent to spy out at the oil field.”
“I like what Streeter said about Pee Wee being the target of that explosion at the well, Mama. Him and Kenneth were partners. Maybe the idea is to get rid of the owners of the oil well.”
Alafair pondered this before she responded. “All right, sugar. Say somebody wanted to do away with Kenneth and Pee Wee both—the co-owners of the well. Who stands to gain?”
There was a moment of dead silence.
The two women stared at each other, wide-eyed.
“Don’t even think it,” Alafair said.
McCoy was confused. “What?”
Martha ignored him. “Since Kenneth died,” she said to her mother, “and after her daddy passes, she’ll own Yeager Transport and Storage outright. And if Pee Wee was to die, she’d own the well outright, too.”
McCoy got the picture. “You can’t imagine that your cousin…”
Martha cut him off with a look. “I imagine that the sheriff and the chief of police will put their heads together and come up with the same thought, if they haven’t already.”
“It’s a ridiculous idea,” Alafair said. “In fact, this brings us back to Collins, to my way of thinking. Doing away with Kenneth and Pee Wee would just make it all the easier for him to wrest everything at once from one bereaved, inexperienced, twenty-one-year-old girl. The only problem is, I happen to know that Lester is leaving controlling interest in the business to my brother George, so if that’s Collins’ plan, his game will be knocked into a cocked hat.”
“Uncle George! Does Olivia know this?”
“I don’t think so. And don’t you go telling her, now. Lester may want to change his will yet.”
“Well, then, Ma, if she doesn’t know, that’s no alibi for her, or for anybody else, either.”
“I know, Martha.” Alafair leaned back and sighed. “Thank you for buying me a pop, Streeter. I feel better now. I think I’ll walk on over to the hospital and see if the police will let me sit with poor Pee Wee for a spell. Streeter can take you back to Ruth Ann’s, Martha.”
“Let me sit with you, Mama.”
“No, I’ll be fine, sugar. I need you to take Grace off of Lu’s hands. Tell everybody what’s happened and where I am. I’ll take the streetcar back to the house in an hour or so.”
***
Olivia and her mother were alone in the vandalized house. The police had finally left after an interminable search, endless questions, and instructions to Olivia to make a list of missing items and contact them instantly if she found anything of interest in the wreckage.
Ruth Ann slumped in an armchair, the one upright piece of furniture in Kenneth’s study, looking tired and deflated. She was holding a cheerful, bouncy Ron in her lap. Olivia stood in the middle of the floor with her hands on her hips, surveying the damage. She felt unnaturally calm about the whole thing. She wondered briefly if the sheer number of disasters in the past few days had completely used up her supply of emotions. If so, she was grateful for the respite.
She bent over and righted a side table before returning a dented lamp to its place on top.
“Olivia,” Ruth Ann admonished, “leave all that, now. It’ll be dark soon. Pack up anything you want to take with you and let’s get on back to the house. You can come back in the morning, after we visit Kenneth at the funeral home.”
“Just a minute, Mama.” She slid the center drawer back into Kenneth’s desk. “I’d feel better if I could at least get the rest of the furniture standing upright. Then it won’t look quite so hopeless tomorrow.”
She squatted down and grasped the toppled bookshelf, but it was heavier than she had thought and she couldn’t budge it.
Ruth Ann stood up with Ron in her arms. “That’s too much for you, shug. Give it up. Tomorrow we’ll have Mike Ed send out some men from the warehouse and they’ll have everything back in place in a blink. Besides, you’re all rear end over every-which-way with that bookshelf. That’s the bottom you’re lifting, see? You’re trying to set it upside down.”
But Olivia wasn’t listening. She stood up and kicked some of the scattered books out of the way. “Look here, Ma. What’s this?”
Ruth Ann peered at the second shelf, where Olivia was pointing. “What? That? It looks like a piece of brown paper.”
Olivia stepped over the disarray of books and papers on the floor and leaned over to feel the small paper square that had been appended somehow to the bottom of the shelf. “It’s been glued to the shelf. I can feel something underneath the paper here, something hard. Wait. This paper is only pasted on three sides. It’s like a little pocket, open toward the front. I can scoot this out….”
She straightened and held up a small metal object pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
“It’s a key, Ma. A little key.”
Ruth Ann’s eyes widened. “I’ll be switched! You didn’t know that was there?”
“No.”
“What do you suppose it’s to?”
“It looks like a safe deposit box key, Mama. But it’s not the same as the one for the box we have at the First National. It must be for one at some other bank.”
Ruth Ann began to bounce Ron on her hip, and he laughed, unaware of his grandmother’s agitation. All of a sudden, Ruth Ann wanted to get out of that house in the worst way. “What does it mean, Olivia, him hiding a key like that from you? Maybe it’s nothing. Come on, let’s go home right now and call Mr. Burns.”
***
Pee Wee dragged himself up out of the darkness by sheer will. The last thing he remembered was flailing around on the floor in the exhibition room of the Collins Building with a two-hundred-pound, overalls-clad farmer sitting on him and another pounding his gun hand on the floor. He blinked at the white, pressed-tin ceiling above him and struggled to remember just what had happened before the farmer took a seat on his sore ribs, then heaved a satisfied sigh when the vision of Buck Collins’ calf exploding replayed itself in his mind.
His vision was a little foggy, and it took him a second to realize that the specter hovering over him to the right was a person. His first thought was that he was dying, and his mother was come to fetch him to heaven. “Ma?” he whispered.
The blurry apparition moved closer. “It’s Miz Tucker, honey. How’re you doing?”
He blinked to clear his vision, and Alafair’s face came into focus.
“Miz Tucker…where am I?” he croaked. He swiveled his head enough to see a beige wall and the corner of a wooden nightstand.
“You’re in the hospital, Pee Wee. The chief had you brought here after you passed out. Do you remember what happened?”
“Zip is dead,” he said, before he could catch himself.
Alafair’s sharp expression was replaced by a look of such startling tenderness and concern that he caught his breath. Tears started to her eyes, but didn’t spill over. Pee Wee swallowed back his grief before her compassion could unman him.
When she answered him, her voice was steady. “I heard that’s what you said. The sheriff has gone out to Garber to see what happened.” She paused. “You sure shot the dickens out of Mr. Collins.”
“I did,” he confessed. “Why ain’t I in jail?”
“Well, now, you are under arrest. There’s a policeman standing right outside the door.”
Pee Wee snorted. “I should have figured. No other way I’d have a hospital room all to myself.”
“Why’d you shoot Mr. Collins, son?”
“Somebody put that missing nitro into the oil can. Blew that boy to pieces when he went to oil a sticky journal. Killed the machinist, too.”
Alafair took her handkerchief out of her sleeve and gently dabbed the tears that were running from Pee Wee’s good eye. He hadn’t even realized that he was crying.
“And you think Mr. Collins done it?”
“Killed the dog, too,” he continued, as though he hadn’t heard her. “That boy loved that heejus critter.”
“I know he did, Pee Wee.”
“About the only thing he didn’t claim for that dog was that he was a musical instrument.”
“He was a fine specimen, that dog.”
“What are you doing here, Miz Tucker?”
Before she answered, Alafair poured a little water into a glass from a pitcher on the bedside table. She carefully raised Pee Wee’s head from his pillow with one hand and held the glass to his lips. After he had taken a few sips, she put the glass down and settled back into her chair.
“I was there, honey. I came down to the Collins Building to talk to Mr. Collins before you showed up.”
Pee Wee’s forehead wrinkled. “Yes, ma’am. But why are you here?”
“Oh. I asked Mr. Burns if I could sit with you for a spell. I thought you might be needing…well, I hear your folks passed on some time ago.” She didn’t give him time to ponder this statement. “Looks like you’ve been through a mangle. How are you feeling?”
“Hurts some to breathe, and I’m a mite swimmy-headed, but I reckon I’ll live ’til tomorrow, if a tree don’t fall on me.”
“The doctor says you have some broken ribs and a big knot on your head, among other things. I’m surprised you can feel anything at all, considering the size of the needle full of painkiller they stuck you with. I’ve seen the vet use needles like that on mules.”
She was trying to use his physical state to distract him from his emotional state, but it didn’t work.
He lay back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling before he began to muse aloud, talking to himself more than to her. “The generator is blowed to hell. The well is sure enough out of production until I can scare up the money to build a new one. The old one can’t be fixed, that’s for certain. The engine house is nothing but splinters, the derrick is about to fall over, and I think the well head was damaged
. Don’t know how I’m going to get the money to get it going again. I’ve bought plenty of lumber and supplies from Herb Champlin’s hardware stores over the last year. Maybe he’ll hire me on as a tankie at his new skimming plant. Guess my drillers are out of work.” His single eye glanced her way. “Them as ain’t killed, that is.”
“Pee Wee…”
“I think old Deo Juarez had himself a couple of little ones down in El Paso.”
“Pee Wee…”
His eye widened, and she could see gooseflesh rise on his burned arms. “Lord have mercy! What am I going to say to Zip’s ma?”
Alafair reached forward and put her hand over his mouth. “Hush, now. Hush, now. It’s a terrible thing that happened, but there’s nothing you can do about it other than get well, so you help the law bring whoever done this to justice.”
***
Chief Burns was standing outside the door to Pee Wee’s room, talking to the officer on duty, when Alafair emerged into the hall. She seemed calm and businesslike, he thought, even though she was wiping away the tears that were dribbling down her cheeks.
Burns gestured at the room with his chin. “He awake?”
“No, he’s finally asleep.”
“How is he? Is he making any sense?”
She shrugged. “He’s pretty shocky yet. How’s Mr. Collins?”
“They’re operating on his legs, now. Don’t know the prognosis. His wife and sons and all the rest of them are here, though.”
Alafair nodded. “I’m interested in how everybody just takes it for granted that Collins is behind all my family’s recent trouble.”
“Well, there’s good reason to think so. Lester Yeager and Buck Collins have been bitter enemies as long as I’ve known anything about it. And, if your niece’s late husband really was involved in some kind of shady business with Collins, that’s a thing that don’t often turn out well.”
He paused, wondering if Alafair was still listening to him. She had shifted her weight to one foot and folded her arms, and was staring at the hospital-beige wall of the hallway. When he stopped speaking, she looked at him.