The Best American Mystery Stories 2014

by Laura Lippman (ed) (epub)

  “Good afternoon, Miss Polk. I’m terrible sorry to inconvenience you, but I need some assistance and you are just the person to help me. You might need to brace yourself for a disturbing sight.”

  She didn’t say nothing, but if she’d been a pup, I’d of said her ears pricked up. I stepped aside. The man’s body was half crumpled up and half flung out over a cluster of smooth flat boulders. A shallow but lively trickle of creek water had soaked the underside of the man’s good-quality tweed suit and near-new pinstriped shirt. Looking up, I could see what was probably his hat wobbling in the breeze overhead, snagged by a bolt projecting from a trestle beam about 20 feet overhead. His head was stove in at the temple and his neck twisted enough to permit us to see most of his face and to conclude he’d suffered a broke neck.

  “It appears, Miss Polk, that this unfortunate man either jumped or fell from the bridge. Would you happen to know who he is?”

  “I’m sad to say I do. His name is Reynard Farley. A drummer. Haskell Pitt Shoe Company. ‘Ten toes in heaven.’”

  “Ma’am?”

  “That’s the motto of the Haskell Pitt Shoe Company, not an observation.”

  “I see. And you’re sure this is Mr. Farley?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m entirely certain, sheriff. Lord, what a pitiful sight!”

  “Deputy, Miss Polk. Deputy Jervis Stickley. Farley, huh? I thought that’s who it was. Lives at the hotel, don’t he?”

  “Yes. He and his wife are boarders.” She got real quiet, thinking about them that was left behind and was going to have to make do without Mr. Reynard Farley.

  “I was hoping you’d help me, Miss Polk, by breaking the sad news to Mrs. Farley about what has transpired and see, maybe, if there ain’t some friends or kin we should communicate with on her behalf. I’ve got to get the body back to town and have the doctor pronounce him officially dead. I’d hate for Mrs. Farley to get such news accidental like. Those colored boys that found him might have recognized him too, and have already set the county grapevine afire.”

  She narrowed her eyes to fluttering quarter-moons and mulled things over. “I’ll help you get him into my pony cart. We’ll have to fold him up, but I’ve got some vulcanized rubber sheets we can wrap him in. Dr. McQuinney is in Moultrie visiting his nephew. In his absence, either the sheriff or I have the authority to pronounce a body dead. The sheriff is sleeping off the lancing of an axillary abscess.”

  I knowed that already. Our sheriff was susceptible to frequent armpit boils.

  She knelt down by the body, pressed his neck and wrist, and draped a filmy handkerchief she drew from somewhere within that cape over Farley’s nose. It lay motionless as them boulders.

  “He’s dead, all right. Not a doubt in my mind. And I’ll sign the document to that effect. Wound still gelatinous. I’d estimate he’s been dead no more than a couple of hours.”

  She stood up, brushed herself off, and glanced all around. “Where’s his automobile?” I must have looked dumb as a barrel bung.

  “What I mean to say, deputy, is how’d he get out here?”

  “Had an automobile, did he?” My first thought was that Farley had been in a horse-drawn vehicle of some kind, which the horse had probably already towed home to stall and feedbag. I hadn’t noticed any automobiles stopped alongside the road. More people had them every year, including yours truly, but they was still a whole lot less numerous than mules and still as likely to draw a crowd of excited little boys as the mules are to draw flies.

  “Well, might be it’s up there.” She pointed to the trestle bridge. I should mention that the trestle bridge roadbed was wide enough on both sides of the track to serve as walkway or mule crossing, although it would be a mite foolish to attempt such a passage while an actual train was on the bridge. Flying cinders might scorch your clothes, and the side draft could knock a scrawny fella off his pegs.

  A regular-sized dirt road extended beyond the bridge on both ends, running alongside the rail bed. On the east side that road made a sharp turn downhill, becoming a feeder to the county road. On the other side the road soon shrank to just tracks and enough rail bed for the train to follow into town.

  Miss Haseltine Polk whistled for Gumbo to come on down and keep an eye on the deceased while we scouted the area. His hackles went up at the first close whiff, but he did as he was told. Miss Polk had a naturally commanding presence.

  Sure enough, there, parked at the foot of that dirt road, occulted by hovering redbuds, was a Sears and Roebuck Model P, its trunk lid neatly tied down to secure all the shoe boxes stowed inside that kept the latch from catching like it was supposed to.

  I pointed out to Miss Polk some deep scrambling-type footprints going up the road toward the trestle bridge. There was none coming back down.

  “What in the world would lure him up onto that bridge in such a hurry?”

  Me and her mused as one. Once onto the trestle bridge, we didn’t see nothing out of the ordinary, until Miss Haseltine Polk found some tweedy wool threads trapped in the rivets and welded seams of a particular steel railing, about two-thirds of the way across.

  “Must be where he pitched over,” I concluded.

  I was the one who spied what might be splatters of blood on a nearby upright.

  “Don’t seem likely he jumped, you know, intentional, now does it?”

  She shook her head. “It wouldn’t make sense even without the blood. He’s got a load of orders to deliver and make a profit on. A real sweet wife waiting for him at home. He was wearing a watch and chain that were in no respect trinkets. Wouldn’t you think he’d have left those behind for his wife if he intended to take his own life?”

  She cleared her throat. “And to add to the conundrum, there’s that peculiar injury to his face.”

  “Good God, I mean, good gracious, Miss Polk. The man fell off a bridge onto a pile of rocks. Can’t hardly expect him to look like the Arrow collar man.”

  She gave me a look I would have described as fish-eyed, only nothing sporting gills ever had eyes made my mustache tingle like hers did.

  “I know that perfectly well, Deputy Stickley. But those rocks he leapt or fell onto are mossy and humpbacked as a camel. That wound across Mr. Farley’s eye and cheek looks like it was made with a hoe handle. Something elongated and shaped the same from one end of where it struck to the other. It appears he suffered an orbital . . . eye socket . . . fracture.”

  I hadn’t paid much mind to that particular wound, but now that I recollected it, she was right. “Then you think he was struck in the face, up there on the bridge, afore he fell?”

  “I do.”

  “But why? If somebody wanted to rob him, why’d they leave his watch? And all them spanking-new shoes in his automobile? Not to mention the automobile itself.”

  She shrugged.

  “Say, how well do you know the Farleys? Anybody holding a grudge? Old enemies? Ever been accused of cheating anybody? His shoes give anybody one too many bunions?”

  It wasn’t fish eyes but daggers she was flashing my way now.

  “Beg pardon, miss. My levity was uncalled for.”

  The wind gusts on the trestle liked to knock off both our hats. She wrapped her cape more snugly around her, to keep from getting airborne like one of them Wright brothers’ flying machines. Meanwhile the wind continued to riffle her skirt above a pair of sturdy, lace-up shoes and dainty ankles. Her stockings were white as moonlight peeking through dark clouds. She let me cradle her elbow as we made our way off the bridge.

  “I understand that Mr. Farley travels quite a bit,” she told me, “but whenever he’s in town, he seems to get along with everybody just fine. He moved here from Michigan, I believe. But he’s not the least bit brash or irritating. His wife’s from Clayton County. And his reputation as a businessman is spotless. That fusspot Lottie Kreuger just about wore out a pair of pumps before deciding they didn’t fit and she wanted her money back. He gave it to her too.”

  I won’t detail the events surrou
nding our getting Farley’s body out of the creek bed and into the pony cart, all wrapped up in them vulcanized rubber sheets. Just let me say that Miss Haseltine Polk’s strength in no way is a reflection of them dainty ankles. I swear, I think she could have done the job all by herself. We left the body with John Milton Penrose, the most respected embalmer and undertaker in the county. Penrose could make a ninety-year-old scrofula victim look like a Florodora girl.

  Mrs. Farley was sitting on the front porch of the hotel stringing beans. She was a well-made young woman with yellow hair pulled back from a Kewpie-baby face. She was wearing a shirtwaist and one of them boiled-wool jackets women wear nowadays instead of a shawl. Her shoes were perfection, embossed black leather with gilt buttons. Her gold wedding ring was plain, but wide enough to reach her first knuckle. I pulled off my hat, introduced myself, and asked if there was somewheres me and Miss Polk might talk to her alone.

  Mrs. Farley reacted to the news like somebody at the periphery of a coal mine explosion, stricken but not really grasping the situation. Which is why I’d wanted Miss Polk to stay with her awhile. I didn’t want Mrs. Farley to be alone when she got to be fully cognizant of what had happened to her husband.

  I left them in order to roust Edgar Fulton and have him go to Penrose’s to take some camera pictures of the body for Dr. McQuinney and the sheriff to argue about. I told Fulton the county would make good on his expenses, but that was more wishful thinking on my part than anything else.

  That evening Miss Haseltine Polk swept through a fiery sunset to tell me Mrs. Farley was unloading her grief on the Methodist preacher and his wife and that one or the other of them would be sending a telegram to Mrs. Farley’s people in Valdosta, who were good Christians and would probably come to collect Mrs. Farley as soon as they could.

  We were in my office, such as it is. It’s really a tacked-on back room of the general mercantile. Half of a back room. The other half is where the post office stashes undeliverable letters and parcels. But I got my own desk and a rack for my hat and my overcoat. My law-enforcement certificate hangs behind my chair, which swivels if the wheels are canted just right. And there’s a sign on the door with type set by the same fella makes the posters when a tent revival or circus comes to town. It says: DEPUTY SHERIFF, CLAYTON COUNTY. No name. I’m a probationary hire until the county commissioners quit insulting each other long enough to put me on permanent.

  I gave Miss Polk the chair and sat on the old church pew that serves as visitor seating.

  “I think she finally grasped what had happened when I gave her Mr. Farley’s watch and chain. It’s a terrible thing for a woman to lose a husband she loves,” Miss Polk said.

  “Indeed it is.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to seem unfeeling, but I suppose we can ascertain that Mrs. Farley was at some distance from that trestle bridge when Mr. Farley was killed?”

  She gave me a mildly reproving look, but the same thought must have passed through her own mind because she answered me right away.

  “Gansy Washington, one of the hotel cooks, said Mrs. Farley spent the morning in the kitchen, learning how to make yeast rolls. Apparently Mrs. Farley is sufficiently skilled at biscuits but falls short of the mark when it comes to yeast rolls. Gansy is an exacting instructor, I guess, and Mrs. Farley had to go right upstairs for a rest afterwards.”

  “Mrs. Beasley lets guests have the run of her kitchen?”

  Mrs. Beasley’s was one of two hotels in town, but the only one you’d let your sister stay in. I’d already learnt that Miss Haseltine Polk and a lady tutor who preferred not to live with her pupils and a spinster living on her father’s railroad pension and the Farleys boarded there in respectable comfort.

  “Can’t see why not. The Farleys have been staying in the Bullet Room for more than a year.”

  “The Bullet Room?”

  “Oh, I keep forgetting you weren’t brought up here. The Bullet Room is so named because of the evening a group of drummers decided to relieve the monotony of travel with some target practice, using a portrait of Solomon Beasley as the target. They fired off a regular fusillade before somebody got up the courage to intervene. But after everything calmed down, the drummers were properly ashamed of themselves. No one was hurt. And their aim had been so godawful, Solomon Beasley didn’t even get nicked. So Mrs. Hymenia Beasley decided not to make too much of it. Just set a rule that no more than two imbibing drummers can congregate upstairs after dinner. She patched the holes, of course, but it’s been known as the Bullet Room ever since. It’s more of a suite than a room, truth be told, with a side room to dress in and a big rosewood screen separating the sitting room part from the bed.”

  Truth be told, I was getting so tuckered out and hungry, I was starting to hallucinate about Miss Polk in one of them pink silk wrappers women are said to wear when they brush out their hair at night. I pushed open the door to let in some fresh air and skeeters.

  “Was she able to tell you anything more about Farley?”

  “Oh, once the dam broke, it was a regular flood.” Miss Polk unhooked her cape and opened it to show me the damp spots on her bodice. I forced my gaze to be fleeting.

  “She told me they met three years ago, at a Chautauqua in Michigan. She was there as part of a Methodist ladies’ chorale and he was there lecturing on persuasive speech. Their eyes met during ‘Glow, Little Glow Worm,’ and a few lectures and refrains later, he persuaded her to marry him.” Miss Polk sighed deeply, and her eyes welled up in sympathy but did not overflow. No breached dams for Miss Polk.

  “And they decided to settle here instead of in Michigan?”

  “The Haskell Pitt Shoe Company wanted to expand south and had offered Mr. Farley an exclusive sales territory. Having married into a southern family, he seemed like an ideal candidate. Mrs. Farley told me more than once that he’s done quite well.”

  “Married three years, you say? And no children?”

  She flushed. “I didn’t ask her to explain that.”

  “Whys and wherefores aside, no young ’uns?”

  She shook her head sadly. “I almost wish . . . That’s to say, she’d have something, someone, to remember him by, if they had . . . if she were . . .”

  I stood up and cracked my tired back. That pew was meaner than a bony mule. “On the other hand, all things considered, a young widow might fare better childless than otherwise.”

  Miss Polk jerked to her feet and gave me a look sharp as a crosscut saw. “Well, some people can find a silver lining in just about anything.”

  As admiring as I was of her, sharp look and all, I was not about to apologize for being sensible.

  I accompanied her through the dim empty store to the main street door, not wanting to turn her out into the pitch-black alley my office door led into. She refused my offer to accompany her to the hotel, but she seemed to have softened a little toward me during our passage through the livestock feed section.

  “It’s been a trying day, Deputy Stickley, and I want you to know I think you handle your job beautifully. For the most part.”

  “Likewise, Miss Polk.” I cleared my throat. “Might I impose on your kindness one more time?”

  She looked a little wary, but curious.

  “Since the Miss Wainwrights live closest to that trestle bridge, I’d like to pay them a call. And I’d like you to go with me. My little birdies tell me they think of you as a friend.”

  “I have no objections whatsoever. I was on my way there today when you waved me down. I’d be glad to help out.”

  “Wagon or automobile?”

  “Your roadster?” She laughed. “Their dogs would have fits and their chickens would die from fright.”

  What with one thing and another, I didn’t get myself out that way for two days. I’d spoke to the sheriff by telephone and he seemed inclined to think Farley was a victim of ungainliness, not mischief. Till I had evidence to the contrary, I was to look to that for the explanation. What I looked to even more keenly was the Miss Wa
inwrights, because I heared from my little birdies that one or both of ’em walked over that trestle bridge almost every day and might have seen something. Miss Haseltine Polk had a pressing obligation that morning but agreed to meet me at the millpond afterwards to help me analyze any developments and share a scenic picnic lunch.

  I telephoned Miss Lucretia Wainwright beforehand to give her fair warning. By then there was almost a dozen telephones in town. Although the Miss Wainwrights had been among the last to get electrified, they were among the first to get a telephone. Their place was a little hard to get to and both ladies had some health problems, so it was interesting but not unreasonable that the oldest person in town had one of the newest gadgets. The house itself was the crumbling remains of the only plantation house in the county to survive the War Between the States and the turn of the century with the same family in residence. It appeared, however, to be about the end of the line for both.

  I had to run a gauntlet of wheezing, nipping old dogs to get to the front porch, but the immediate yard was nicely tended and the steps swept. The colored woman who answered the door was lanky, pop-eyed, and, I’m guessing, somewhere in her forties. Her hair was completely hid by a mustard-yellow kerchief wrapped tight as a ball of twine, so I can’t speak to how gray she was. She let me into a small side parlor, glaring at my insufficiently scraped boots like she wanted to chop ’em off with a ax.

  A brisk little pitter-patter in the outer hall told me someone was on her way. I’d only seen the “old” Miss Wainwright from a distance in town. I was surprised to realize that the younger of the “old” sisters wasn’t so very old at all. She had some white wisps at the hairline, where it ran up against a pink powdered face. And she wore her hair pulled back from a straight-razor center part in that antiquated style old ladies favor over a fringe. But the bun that gray hair fed into was still chestnut brown. And though she was plumped up in several directions, she had held on to most of her womanly shape. I speculate she wasn’t much more than fifty. She introduced herself as Lucretia Wainwright and said her elderly sister, Beryl, had been so upset by the news of a death on the trestle bridge that she’d taken some “calming” syrup and was unlikely to be downstairs the rest of the day.