Mild West Mysteries: 13 Idaho Tales of Murder and Mayhem

by Conda Douglas

  Keeping my 00.06 rifle broken open and pointed down at the ground, I strode up the steep trail. My calves throbbed with every powerful step. I cursed my lack of preparation for my annual fake bear hunt. Only this year, I wasn’t faking the hunt. This year, I hunted a dumpster diver bear, a bear who’d made the mistake of coming into town and diving my dumpster.

  This year, I’d figured I’d been busy enough at my Mama Chin’s Save On Café to stay in shape. I’d figured wrong. But no way would I huff and puff and maybe groan in front of Dora. I had a reputation, despite my short stature, for being tough to bag a bear just for the fat. Since my Chinese immigrant five generation Idaho family has plenty to be thankful for, the turkeys are free of charge and all you can eat.

  To my gratification, the turkey fry up has become a tradition in Starke, with most of town turning out and turning it into a huge pot luck. I provide my signature turkeys; everyone else provides the side dishes and desserts. Then we all eat way too much, but I figure that’s traditional.

  Now Dora took a couple of steps away from the dead bear. She glanced up the trail as if she needed an escape route, but from what or whom I didn’t know. It couldn’t be me.

  “Did you kill her?” Dora asked me. She spoke through chattering teeth, the clicks of her teeth distorting her words.

  I frowned. “How do you know it’s a she?” I reached Dora and the bear. I stood with one leg forward, bracing myself. I panted, a little, not so much that I figured Dora would notice. Or so I hoped.

  Dora pointed downward and I got my first good look at the bear.

  I gasped, the icy air cutting into the back of my throat. I tasted all the little deaths of fall, the tang of fallen leaves, the smoke from a fireplace somewhere near, and perhaps this new awful death.

  Not a bear. The too-white face barely peeking above the fur coat told me that and told me who.

  A person.

  An annoying, difficult and newbie of a couple of years to our town. Still, a human being.

  Arianne.

  Arianne wore her signature mink fur coat, an old tatty thing. She shed fur like some gigantic ancient cat. I always tortured her for coming into to my café wearing the huge coat, always told her I was afraid the health inspector would close me down for having giant rats. She never got my humor. She never got much of anything about us longtime residents of Starke.

  I stepped forward and reached toward Arianne. “You’re sure she’s gone? You checked?” I snapped at Dora, and then regretted my harsh, scolding tone.

  But Dora appeared to remember that was my way. “Of course I did,” she snarled right back at me. “It’s obvious.”

  “What’s obvious?” I asked. I looked closer and then saw what she meant. Arianne’s eyes stood frozen open, with one eye resting on, no in, the dirt. The taste of a partially digested cinnamon roll from breakfast flooded my mouth. I swallowed hard.

  “Did you shoot her?” Dora’s ridiculous question provided a welcome distraction from the sight. She looked back down at the bear-like form and I knew what she thought. She thought Mama Chin, me myself, had attempted to get her annual bear and shot fur-dressed Arianne by mistake.

  No one knew that I’d given up bear hunting a few years ago. Used to get me a bear each fall, then I got to feeling sorry for the bears and for my 55-year-old knees.

  Add to that, the fat’s too saturated for our modern cholesterol-laden hearts. Also, no one noticed the switch out from bear lard to good old virgin olive oil for the turkey fryers. Or if they did, they didn’t say a word. They wouldn’t dare. I’ve been known to ban people from the Save On, more than once. It’s my restaurant, and my say.

  But I figured I needed to keep up a pretense of my yearly bear hunt. Turned out, my wandering around the woods for a few days became a welcome break from work, a mini-vacation. Then I’d go home and photoshop my older more wrinkled face onto an old photo of me with one of my dead bears, a bear which had been in that state for years.

  Not this year. This year I hunted for real and hunted one specific bear, my dumpster diver. Although I’d never caught sight of the beast, I could tell from the trash scattered around my bin that a bear used my trash as a buffet. And I knew that meant the bear had become a threat not just to my café’s leftovers, but to Starke residents. A bear that far into town was a bear without fear of humans. In Starke, we took care of our own and it was my responsibility to remove the threat.

  “You can tell me if you accidentally killed her. These things happen. Not that it isn’t still a bad action, bad karma, but understandable.”

  Dora’s flood of words pulled me out of my bear musings.

  I lowered my eyebrows and glared at Dora. She flinched. “I never shoot uphill,” I said. “No hunter does, you know that.” I shifted my gaze to Arianne. “Although, I gotta say, she does make an excellent beary target in that coat.”

  The wind ruffled the mink fur, making it appear that Arianne stirred, perhaps objecting to my personifying her as bear-like. But in many ways, with her stubborn, aggressive and successful business tactics, she was.

  I looked down at Arianne, wondering why the woman was out here, dressed to die. I wasn’t the only hunter who snuck out the day before hunting season opened. Then I spotted the telltale bucket of huckleberries tucked under the huckleberry bush. Arianne must have been huckleberry hunting, as must have Dora, both trying to get the prized berries before the bears did.

  Darn fool Arianne. She always insisted that as an Eastern Seaboarder she could show us small town Idaho hicksters and hucksters how to run our businesses and lives. That is, if’n we could get those potatoes wedged in our ears out long enough to understand. That meant she never listened to our advice.

  Or if she did, she only heard what she wanted to hear, such as when I told her last night, “Huckleberry pies sell great. There’s patches of huckleberries all over beside the trails.” But apparently she never heard my saying, “Make sure when you go out to pick ’em you wear bright colors, hunter’s orange preferably.” Not dress up in imitation of a game animal.

  “I know no hunter shoots toward a ridge,” Dora said, her voice clear and hot. Maybe her anger warmed her up some, got rid of her shivers. “It’s a great way to kill somebody coming over that ridge. But that’s the direction I came from and I didn’t see a soul the whole way. So when you got excited at seeing the bear and shot uphill—”

  I held up one hand in a stop gesture. “Whoa, Dora. I don’t get that excited. And I haven’t shot at anything anywhere today.”

  “But then how—” Dora seemed reluctant to let go of her scenario of me killing Arianne. That was our Dora, once she got hold of some idea, she hardly never let go, no matter how wrong-headed that idea was. Good thing she’d gotten a hold of Buddhism—I shuddered to think if she gone all weird cult instead.

  “You’ve taken a jump and run off with a ridiculous idea, as usual.”

  Dora frowned, her face saying she suspected I just didn’t want to own up to shooting Arianne.

  I sighed at looked down at the fallen woman. “Listen to me, Dora.” As if she would. “We don’t even got any idea how long ago Arianne was shot.”

  Dora chewed her lower lip. “Couldn’t have been days. I saw her last night.”

  “Me too.”

  Dora’s chewing increased. She might eat her lower lip if she didn’t ease up. “But—”

  Something that I should have thought of earlier flashed into my mind. “Did you hear a shot?” I tried to appeal to Dora’s common sense—I knew it existed in her somewhere. “I didn’t hear a shot. So if she was shot, it must have happened right after dawn.”

  Dora gasped. “Then she might have been killed on purpose. Oh no, that means somebody finally got too fed up and murdered her.”

  I sighed. My attempt to find sense in Dora had failed, not for the first time. Granted, she appeared shook up and shocked by the death—me too. Maybe neither of us thought straight right now. “No, it only means that she may not be shot. She may
have had a massive heart attack or something.” Arianne might be competition, but she always was first in line at my Thanksgiving Turkey Feast.

  For illustration, I pointed down at Arianne’s body. Dora nodded. We both knew that Arianne gained enough weight to fill out that coat to bursting in the months after she opened her restaurant in Starke. Probably from eating her own delicious creations as well as my once-yearly turkey, I’d eaten at her place a few times to check out the competition and been appalled at how great the food was. Too much competition, for my taste, but that’s how it goes.

  Dora reached toward Arianne. “Let’s find out.”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” I said.

  Dora pulled her hand back. She knew what I meant, but didn’t know or trust what I’d do if she didn’t obey. Good. She still bought into my “tough old Mama Chin” persona.

  Or so I believed until she put that hand on her hip and said, “Why not? Afraid you’ll faint?”

  I gritted my teeth together. “No, because if someone did shoot her and shoot her on purpose then we’ll be destroying evidence.”

  Dora put her fist to her mouth. I agreed with the sentiment she expressed in that gesture.

  “I’m calling Sheriff Mallard.” I pulled out my cell phone. No bars. Drat.

  “No bars, I already checked.” Dora could be sensible sometimes.

  I sighed. “Okay, I’ll stay with Arianne and you walk into town—”

  Dora tucked her chin. “I’m not walking by myself.”

  I growled deep in my throat, bear-like. Dora didn’t flinch. “Whyever not?” I demanded.

  Dora snorted. “We don’t know what happened to Arianne. Same thing might happen to me.”

  A vision of a crazed hunter rampaging through the woods blasting away at orange-vested and brilliant red-haired Dora made me smile. Then I remembered that it might be murder.

  “Let’s go.” Dora started off down the trail.

  I shook my head. “Wait. I can’t go. We can’t leave her here alone.”

  Dora stopped and turned to frown at me. “Why not? It’s not like she’ll notice and be upset.”

  “Because we take care of our own and there’s a bear around and bears are scavengers and they’re not particular about what kind of dead meat they eat.”

  Dora went white and I regretted my words. I took a deep breath and smelled the smoke of someone’s fireplace. Oh dear, why had I forgotten? It must have been the sight of Arianne that knocked it right out of my head. Course, that family never did stand out much, real reclusive even before the dad took off.

  “We’ll go together to the Bristols,” I said. The Bristols lived out of town and a short distance from this ridge. It must be the smoke from their fireplace I smelled.

  Dora’s mouth opened in a round “O.” “Oh yeah, they’re just a bit aways and they’re bound to have a landline or a satellite dish out here.”

  “Even so, we need to hurry.” Now that I’d mentioned it and thought on it no telling where that bear might be.

  * * *

  Teenage Paul Bristol stood and peered at us through a 5-inch crack in the warped front door. I worked real hard not to stare at the angry zit sitting right above the eyebrow of Paul’s one eye peeking through the gap. His eye watered from staring at us wide-eyed.

  “Come on, Paul, let us in,” Dora said, and pushed on the weathered door. That’s our Dora, barreling in without a thought of how people living out in the woods might react. Here in the remote reaches of Idaho, it’d be how armed people might react. Here in hunting-wise Idaho, it’s rare to be unarmed. Here in Idaho, it paid to remember that. Ask Arianne.

  Through the widening crack, I could see Paul push back with one skinny arm. He must be at the stage where he’d shot up but not filled out, all sticks wired together. I sighed and put one hand on Dora’s shoulder. “Dora, enough.” She knew to stop. “Paul, we don’t need to come in, we just need you to call Sheriff Mallard and tell him there’s been an accident.”

  “Or a mur—” Dora started to say when I smacked her on the shoulder. No sense upsetting an already twitchy teenager.

  Paul opened the door a little wider. “We don’t got a phone.”

  “You don’t have—” Dora opened her mouth again. I squeezed her shoulder again. She shut her mouth again. Good Dora.

  I pointed at the ubiquitous old beat up Ford truck that sat to one side of the cabin, standard issue for anyone living in the Idaho Mountains. “How about you drive down to Starke then?”

  Paul opened the door wider and leaned out to look at the truck. His forehead wrinkled as if he’d never seen the family vehicle before. Behind him, I could see a ways into the cabin to where a couple of dirty feet protruded over the end of a ragged sofa.

  Another body? I surely hoped not. Bad enough to have one.

  Then the feet twitched and the sofa body snored, a dainty, feminine sound that made me think it must be Paul’s mom, sleeping it off again. Ever since Daddy Bristol took off, Mommy Bristol alleviated her grief with alcohol therapy.

  I snorted at my own foolishness. Arianne must of knocked me off my common sense, not an easy thing to do.

  Paul must have caught my looky-loos, ’cause he stepped out onto the cabin’s porch and shut the door. “I don’t know how to drive yet.”

  “Then give me the keys.” There went Dora again, just as I remembered seeing Paul roaming around town on his bicycle, but never seeing the truck with either his mom or him driving. Heck, for all Dora and I knew, the truck couldn’t be driven anymore. Out of gas or broken. Or both.

  Paul’s expression of a bear caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, knowing his time was up, confirmed my suspicions.

  Dora reached out for the keys. I grabbed Dora’s arm. “Nope, it’s better we stay here and get back to the body.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We found her, so we’re witnesses at best and suspects at worst and shouldn’t go off running to town.”

  At “suspects” Paul shifted from foot to foot, that skinny bear caught in the crosshairs about to bolt.

  “I didn’t—” Dora said and before she could say something that’d mean we’d both be walking to town I hustled her off the porch.

  I looked over my shoulder and pointed at Paul, standing frozen. “You head down on that bicycle of yours and get Sheriff Mallard up here pronto,” I ordered.

  Paul nodded, obviously relieved to know what to do.

  “Wait—what—” Dora dug in her well-worn hiking boot heels.

  “Back to the body,” I commanded.

  * * *

  “Was it an accident or did you mean to kill her or was it in the heat of the moment?” Dora asked me.

  I stared at Dora, unable to think of a snappy comeback. Then I snatched the cinnamon roll plate away from her reaching fingers and held it out to Sheriff Mallard instead. He grabbed the biggest and gooiest before he said, “Good question.”

  Now it was turn to stare at Mallard. I swear I didn’t know where that man put all those cinnamon rolls of mine he gobbled down daily. He remained the skinny Sheriff of Starke. I kept my eyes on him until sweat broke out all over his face, despite the coolness in my closed café.

  Dora chewed her lower lip instead of my signature cinnamon rolls. “It’s okay, I understand, you can tell us, Mama Chin.” Dora’s voice sounded soft and low, as if she approached a living wild animal, a crabby mama bear perhaps.

  “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. “We spent hours waiting and talking and waiting up on that deer trail whilst you,” I pointed at Mallard, “and those Staties took care of Arianne. Then you,” I pointed at Dora, “suggested we come to my café because we were all starving.”

  Dora nodded and reached for another cinnamon roll. I smacked her hand away.

  “And you still have the gall to eat my cinnamon rolls when you’ve accused me of murder?”

  Dora compressed her cinnamon roll bereft lips. “You had reason to want Arianne dead.”

  Mallard st
uffed a huge bite of roll into his mouth and nodded.

  I found myself nodding too. Dora’s accusation rang true enough. Arianne moved into town and opened up her own combo restaurant/gift shop/convenience store. One stop shopping in a town the size of Starke meant that for the first couple of years after she opened that’s where everyone shopped. Even though Starke was Idaho’s newest ski resort and so we now had tourists, still it cut deep into my profit margin. Some days I even ended up tossing a few stale cinnamon rolls out. Before Arianne, that’d never happened.

  My nod stopped. I did some lip compressing of my own. “You had reasons too, Dora.”

  Dora co-owned and operated her aunt’s gift shop, Mad Maddie’s Marvels. I knew she’d also seen sales plummet.

  She fingered her Ohm pin, a fused glass symbol of her faith that she always wore, this time on the outside of her orange jacket. “I’m a Buddhist,” she replied, as if that expunged her from any possibility of suspicion. Knowing Dora, and Dora’s heart, maybe it did.

  I only wished she could see past my grumbly and crumbly exterior to my heart. I grunted. “Her restaurant shut down, you bet I’d like that. Maybe her run out of town, okay, maybe. She sure annoyed me, what with her ‘this is how to do business’ snootiness. But I never wanted Arianne dead.”

  “But you were the last person seen with her, last night,” Mallard said, through a last mouthful of roll.

  “That you know of,” Dora said.

  That was our Dora, first she accuses me then she defends me. This time, when she reached for a roll I let her.

  “We talked about how her business has slacked off—”

  Dora grinned. “About time the ‘new’ wore off.”

  “Yeah I felt that way too, but I figured she’d been in Starke long enough to be one of us. We take care of our own. So I suggested—” I stopped right before I told Dora that it was my idea for Arianne to go huckleberry picking. If she didn’t suspect me before, she’d suspect me now.

  She guessed anyway. “So you suggested adding huckleberry desserts to her menu, right? So you knew exactly where Arianne—”