Darlene Franklin - Dressed for Death 01 - Gunfight at Grace Gulch

by Darlene Franklin

  “Me neither.” I pulled out Audie’s sketch of the area in front of the saloon and peered at it under a passing streetlight. “Can you turn on the overhead light?”

  Audie curbed the car and switched on the light. “What is it?”

  I studied the placement of the figures. From where Suzanne was standing, it would take an expert marksman to make the shot.

  Something, I was sure, she was not.

  11

  September 18, 1891 Excerpt C

  Gaynor has a good stallion, a black beauty, sixteen hands tall, who looks as if he could win any race he entered. I wonder about Patches. I remember the last run and how other horses outran us.

  I have lightened the load that he must carry in hopes of increasing his speed. The ride will be long and hard, over several hills and through thick woods. His experience and endurance should serve us well.

  Nevertheless, I looked over animals on sale for the land run. I see more claims of “made the ’89 run!” than are credible. Most of them are old nags, not strong enough for the journey.

  I will stay with Patches and hope for the best.

  Your loving fiancé,

  Robert Grace

  ~

  Monday, September 23

  Back in Audie’s Focus, I stared into the now-turquoise night. A hint of sunset lingered through a gap in the hills to the west, a thin band of brilliant-hued clouds. A hundred years ago, my great-grandfather might have looked upon the same sight. Didn’t King Solomon say there is nothing new under the sun? I wondered if and how my ancestors dealt with murder and mayhem or if they accepted it as a normal part of pioneer life.

  “It’s still fairly early.” Audie’s voice interrupted my reverie. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard: five past eight. “Since we’ve already had dinner, I’d like to take a look at Grace’s papers. How about you?”

  “Sure. Do you really think they will hold a clue to Penn’s murder?” They might.

  “Maybe.” Audie grinned. “I confess that I am nosy. I want to read Grace’s side of the story about the infamous land run.”

  “Let’s go to my house then.” I had driven that day, in case I needed to shop or make deliveries.

  Deliveries. I had intended to bring Suzanne’s costume home tonight, make the needed repairs, and return it to her tomorrow. Oh, well. Audie’s blind spot where she was concerned, bothered me more than I cared to admit. Did he consider me too provincial—the Okie I was, in fact—in my attitude about Suzanne’s affair with Penn? Maybe he imbibed the live-and-let-live philosophy of the theatrical community.

  I couldn’t. I knew as well as the next person that it only took one sin, any sin, to separate one from God, and that He extended His grace to everyone equally. But from a human perspective, the excesses common among the Hollywood crowd sickened me.

  Families mattered. As frustrating as Dad, Dina, and Jenna could be, they were always there, the foundation of my life. An adulterer might laugh family values in the face. I wondered about Audie’s background. What roots did the man I had come to know over the past few months grow from? What about his father? I tried to imagine Audie in twenty-five years’ time. Thin, fair hair would grow lighter as gray replaced the blond locks. Those piercing blue eyes diminished by spectacles, or maybe still shining thanks to laser surgery. Laughter lines on his forehead. He would age well.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Audie said.

  “Oh, I was thinking about. . .family history and stuff like that.” I was glad the dark hid the blush coloring my cheeks. I didn’t want to confess my image of him as an older man. “Tell me about your family.”

  “My parents are both living. They’re still together, a blessing in this day and age.”

  “Any siblings?”

  Audie shook his head. “But tons of cousins. Both of my parents came from large families.”

  An only child. Even worse than dealing with Jenna and Dina.

  “It wasn’t so bad. I used to make up plays to entertain myself,” Audie said as if reading my mind. “I got to play all the parts.”

  We turned the corner to my house.

  “Speaking of plays. I hope we discover the information Hardy used to write about the land run in Grace’s papers.” He sounded so cheerful, I suspected that he was mentally rubbing his hands together.

  Audie pulled his Focus to the curb in front of my house, cutting off further discussion. I walked straight in. Even after the murder last weekend, I hadn’t bothered with locking my door. After all, the murderer hadn’t come after me. Audie entered behind me and headed for the kitchen.

  “Give me a minute to change into something from this century,” I said. “Make yourself at home.”

  The sound of china rattling and water splashing followed me as I dashed upstairs. I wormed my way out of the walking dress I had worn for the day and looked for something more comfortable. Not my sweats. Audie had never seen me at my worst, and tonight was no time to start. Instead, I chose a simple white blouse and navy blue slacks, with a pink cardigan for warmth. I let my hair out of the bun and pulled it back with a hair clip and added reading glasses I had purchased at the supermarket for a few dollars. I needed them for historic papers like the Grace documents with their faded and spidery handwriting, often cramped to fit the maximum numbers of words on a page.

  By the time I made it downstairs, Audie had brewed a pot of tea—apple cinnamon, by the scent—and cut up one of the Granny Smiths that I kept in a basket on the table. He moved efficiently, apple peels and cores already disposed, a new roll of paper towels hanging on a vertical towel rack. I hadn’t expected my dreams of us working side by side in my kitchen to come true so soon.

  A small avalanche of envelopes waited in the center of the table.

  “Your gal Friday, reporting for duty.” I grinned at him.

  “Aye, aye, Dr. Watson. Come and join me.” Audie looked at me and smiled in appreciation, as if I had dressed for a night at the opera. “I was trying to put the letters in chronological order, but it’s slowgoing.”

  I picked up one of the envelopes. A shiver passed through me. I held living history in my hands. A bold black script addressed each envelope to a Miss Mary Langston in Abilene, Kansas. The postmarks, barely legible over the claret-colored two-cent stamps, ranged from Dodge City to various places in Texas. “The Chisholm Trail,” I said.

  “Wasn’t Grace a cowboy before he settled down to ranch life?”

  “I believe so.”

  “What about Gaynor?”

  “Oh, he was a farmer. Another aspect of their feud—farmer vs. rancher.”

  We divided the pile between us. Pieces of paper as thin as parchment fell into my hands and opened the door to another way of life. I could almost breathe in the dust—well, that hadn’t changed much, had it? And feel Grace’s faithful pony Patches beneath me. These were the letters of a man deeply in love with his fiancée, a dreamer. Reading his tender expressions of love made me feel like a voyeur.

  “I wish I could pick a posy of thistle and lace to bring to you. The day the land is mine, I will bring you flowers every day, if you like.” Oh, to have someone love me like that. I looked again at the plate with apple slices, now reduced to two thin pieces. It was the kind of thoughtful thing that Bob Grace might have done for his Mary. His practical concerns about the dangers of childbirth and the harsh realities of pioneer life also touched me.

  “He mentions Gaynor.” Audie looked up from the letter he was reading. “He knew they were both going to make the run for the same piece of land. And it sounds like Gaynor had the better horse. Bigger, at any rate.”

  “So the feud started before the actual race. If there was a race, if Grace actually did make the run and wasn’t a ‘Sooner’ who camped out on the land ahead of time, like Gaynor always claimed.”

  “I haven’t seen anything about that yet.”

  We continued reading. Audie chuckled. “He describes the land as a ‘piece of Eden.’ I confess that’s not what jumped
to my mind when I decided to move to Oklahoma.” He must have seen the hurt expression on my face, because he hastened to add, “But first impressions can be deceiving. I was expecting flat fields of waving grain, not trees as thick as a primeval forest on the way in and out of town. Or the constant rise and fall of the back roads.”

  “People don’t always realize how diverse Oklahoma is. The high plains start in western Oklahoma. Texas, too. Eastern Oklahoma is very green.” I started another letter. “It appears that Mary Grace did her part to make it a garden. Maybe she planted some of the pecan trees that thrive here.”

  “I did see a reference to peach and apple trees. Were there really so many people eager to make the run?”

  “Usually about three times as many people showed up as there were potential homesteads. I’ve often wondered what happened to the others. Some of them sold everything just to reach for their dreams.”

  “Grace writes about that.”

  We continued reading in silence without finding anything. I opened the last envelope, dated September 19, 1891. I blinked and read it again. I will do whatever I must to secure land for our future.

  “I’ve found it.” My voice trembled. “It looks like Gaynor was right. Grace planned to be on the land before the run.”

  “What?” Audie’s brows shot up.

  I handed the thin sheet to Audie.

  “I am ready to cheat. . .I have found a cave where I can hide. . .” He read the words out loud. “Gaynor was right all along.” He sounded disappointed. “It’s hard to believe Grace would put his plan on paper. Wasn’t it illegal?”

  I shrugged. “Why not? He was mailing the letter to someone who wouldn’t receive it until after the deed was done. And he shared everything with Mary.” My mind reeled with the implications. “But this is not the story Penn wrote for the reenactment. He used the traditional story, Grace’s revisionist history. Why? Did he ever discuss it with you?”

  Audie shook his head. “He said he had found some interesting information in the letters that he intended to use. I got the feeling that his journalistic interest was aroused, and I expected to see a complete report in last weekend’s edition of the Herald. He had unearthed some photos from around the time of the land run. But he didn’t print the story.”

  Possibilities raced through my mind. Suzanne said Penn was working on a big story. In Grace Gulch, no story would interest people more than the possible overturn of our sacred history. Didn’t she also say that he was working on some get-rich-quick scheme?

  An ugly thought crossed my mind. No one took Grace Gulch’s history more seriously than Mayor Ron. And his name, the one I had considered the least likely and the most laughable, appeared on our list of suspects.

  “Tell me about the newspapers,” Audie said. “I’m guessing that Grace and Gaynor each started a paper back in the day.”

  “Yes.” My voice sounded hoarse to my ears. “Gaynor named his paper after the famous educator Sequoyah, the one who invented the Cherokee alphabet. Grace laughed at that, said that Grace Gulch lay on former Sac-Fox land, not Cherokee, and started up the Herald.” I thinned my lips in a smile. “In anything short of a world war, they were very partisan. Now, if you are a Grace, you take your news to the Herald; but if you’re a Gaynor, you go to the Sequoian.”

  “And if you’re neither?”

  “I put ads in both papers.”

  Audie laughed. “Even so, it was probably in Penn’s best interests to stick to the traditional story of the land run. Anything else and Mayor Ron might run him out of town.”

  I didn’t dare to voice my own suspicions. That’s all I had to go on, really, a suspicion, a whiff of an idea, no more substantial than smoke. What if Penn showed the letters to the mayor in an effort to blackmail him? Mayor Ron would do anything to protect the Grace family name—but did that include murder?

  “I like your mayor.”

  So did I. Mayor Ron had the support of everyone except the most rabid Gaynors.

  “I couldn’t believe his office, the first time I saw it. All that memorabilia from different cities named Grace. North Dakota, Idaho—”

  “Even New Zealand. He jokes about retiring there.” I hoped my suspicions were unfounded, but now that they had lodged in my mind, I felt compelled to investigate the possibility. Weariness washed over me, and I wanted to lay my head on the table. It had been a long day. I folded the offending letter and stuffed it back in the envelope.

  Audie followed my example, refolding thin sheets of letter paper and tucking them inside envelopes. “There is one more thing I wanted to discuss with you.”

  “Let me make more tea.” I didn’t really want the beverage, but my tumultuous thoughts needed a chance to subside. What did he want to talk about? Persuade me to drop the investigation? Back out of helping me? Ask for Jenna’s phone number? The kettle took a minute to reheat while I rinsed out our mugs. No more sugar for me tonight, I decided. I would take my orange spice tea black.

  By the time I finished fixing the tea, Audie had tidied up the letters and moved them to the small escritoire that I kept in my kitchen.

  He stirred in a teaspoon of sugar and took a sip. “I wanted to talk to you about Suzanne.”

  My heart plummetted. He’s interested in her. I knew it.

  “I’ve been praying for her. I try to pray for everyone involved with the theater. But I’ll redouble my efforts now. I had no idea that she was so unhappy.”

  “Pray for her?” I echoed his words in a high-pitched squeal. “Oh, of course.” Here I was feeling jealous, and Audie was getting all spiritual and high-minded on me.

  “More than anything else, she needs Jesus.”

  Audie, the apostle to the theater crowd. He put me to shame. When I opened my business, I intended to share the faith of our fathers—perhaps I should say the faith of our mothers since we carried hardly any menswear—with my customers along with their clothing. And how seldom I succeeded.

  “Of course you’re right.” I swallowed my tea in an effort to hide my embarrassment. “And Gwen, too, to get through this awful time.”

  “Absolutely. And I’ll be praying for your sister. Jenna, I mean. Dina is already on my prayer list.”

  And me? We did work together on the theater. I thought of my own spotty prayer journal and felt ashamed once again.

  “Jenna?” I said out loud. Maybe the spark I thought I had seen wasn’t a figment of my imagination.

  “She seems so. . .well, confused. Unsettled. You are a solid rock. You’ve put down deep roots here. She’s a wandering soul.”

  “Is that a bad thing or a good thing?”

  “It’s a good thing, for you. You’re an anchor. You, your faith, your good sense. Jenna needs you, you know.”

  Yeah, I knew that. Experts said the middle child usually played peacemaker in the family. How Jenna passed the eldest child’s role of caretaker on to me flummoxed me. I sighed.

  “You’re an amazing person, Cici. You’re the glue that holds your family together. You take care of your dad. You practically raised Dina by yourself. You’re a successful businesswoman. And now you’re showing another aspect of your character—a twenty-first century Jane Marple, jumping into this investigation.” His eyes crinkled in silent merriment. “A trailblazer, caretaker, independent spirit. You epitomize the pioneer spirit.”

  I blinked. I looked into Audie’s eyes, as clear and deep as Lake Tenkiller, and saw nothing there but sincerity. He reached across the table and clasped my right hand between both of his. Something unspoken hung between us.

  He shuffled to his feet without letting go of my hand. His lips brushed my cheek. “And someday soon, when this mess is behind us, we’ll talk more.” He released my hand, and the magic spell ended.

  A few moments later, I heard the door close and a car engine start. I stayed at the table, staring into the cooling tea, while thoughts whirled through my head. A smile stretched my face so far that it hurt.

  Audie liked all the things
about me that made me feel like a country woman who would never amount to anything outside of Grace Gulch. And he had hinted at a much deeper emotion.

  Bursting with joy, I jumped up from the table, rinsed out the mugs, and changed for bed. After the uproar of the day, I had expected a sleep-deprived night, the many revelations of the day repeating themselves endless times in my thoughts.

  Instead, Audie’s compliments replayed themselves in my memory. Buoyed by his good opinion, I fell into a deep sleep.

  12

  September 19, 1891 Excerpt A

  Dearest Mary,

  It is happening again. Just like in April of ’89, people are gathering at the border of the unassigned lands by the thousands. So many people are hungry for a fresh start. Working their own land would be a dream come true. Already twice as many people have assembled as there is land available, and I expect the numbers to soar to twenty thousand or more.

  Dearest, my hope for a better result in this run is fast disappearing. What shall we do if I fail?

  So I place my faith in God and in my pony. And wonder if there is more I should do.

  ~

  Tuesday, September 24

  When I awoke the next morning, my first thought was of Audie’s amazing confession, and my good mood persisted. I decided to wear one of my favorite ensembles—this time a post–World War II dress, a pink floral design that did nice things for my figure, with three-quarter-length sleeves and a V-neck trimmed with white lace, belted with a silver buckle, the luxuriant feel of real silk on my legs. As usual, my hair took the longest time to fix. Manipulating my bangs into a high curl over my forehead with a curling iron, I pulled back the rest into a French twist.

  I stopped by Gaynor’s Goodies for a bag of tea cakes and managed to leave without spilling everything I had learned to the town gossip. I arrived at the store in time to brew a pot of coffee before nine. Today’s outfit had inspired me to plan a 1940s front window display. I had posters of Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth, those two prototypical pinup girls. Creating a window around their fashions would be fun. As for an Oklahoman, I would look to Angie Debo, the “First Lady of Oklahoma History.” Surfing the Internet for further ideas, I ran across a picture of a platinum blond Veronica Lake and remembered Suzanne.