“And he’s the hero? A crook that makes the law look like fools?”
“Well, he’s also a detective, sort of like that Englishman, Sherlock Holmes.”
“A dandified crook who doubles as a detective. Now I heard it all.”
“You ought to read one of his adventures, Sheriff. The way he works it—”
I never did find out how the French rascal works it because Bert Milbank came hurrying in just then waving a Western Union envelope. “Your return telegram from Ridgley County,” he said to me. “Just came over the wire.”
“About time.”
I opened it up, and what it said was:
RAINEY ASSAULTED BY THIEVES STOP YES ABLE TO TALK STOP
T. BANNERMAN
SHERIFF
Bannerman sure was parsimonious with words, whatever his reason. He’d put just enough into this wire to whet the appetite for a full explanation. Bert asked me if I wanted to reply again and I said no. No sense in wasting Peaceful Valley taxpayers’ money any more than T. Bannerman was wasting Ridgley County’s. All I’d get out of him was more dribs and drabs, if he was willing to dole out anything more at all.
When Bert left, I showed the wire to Carse. He said after he read it, “Assaulted by thieves. That’d seem to let out Bob Axthelm.”
“Not necessarily. Sheriff Bannerman could have it wrong, a personal beating made to look like robbery. We need to know from Rainey what happened. And if it’s likely he strangled the Axthelm girl and what his motive might’ve been if he did.”
“So I’m off to Timber Point tomorrow to find out.”
“First train to Missoula in the morning,” I said. “Better take that magazine of yours along, Carse. Maybe that crook detective Lupin can give you some pointers on how to squeeze the truth out of a beat-up murder suspect.”
THIRTEEN
AS EXPECTED, WORD of the murder got out as soon as Clyde Rademacher started summoning the members of the coroner’s jury on Monday morning. You can’t keep a tight hitch on such a violent and suggestive crime for long, not in a small town like Peaceful Bend that hasn’t had a homicide to spice things up in more than a decade. The buzz had already started when I left my house for the mortuary, like the faint hum from a beehive when you give it a pass-by. The queen bee was sure to have the news and be spreading it far and wide. Wasn’t a morsel of fresh gossip that Reba didn’t detect right off. The woman had antennae for ears.
Doc Olsen’s preliminary statement to the coroner’s jury and the viewing of Charity Axthelm’s remains didn’t take long once everybody was assembled. Neither did the rest of the inquest in the town council’s chambers in the courthouse, with Doc and Clyde Rademacher presiding. The only others present beside the jurymen were me, Jeb Barrett, Boone Hudson, and Lester Smithfield; the girl’s parents and brother weren’t required to testify and hadn’t come in, a good thing because the proceedings would only have added to their grief.
Jeb and Boone and I testified to how the body came to be found and removed from the well. I answered the jurymen’s questions as best I could, giving a watered-down account of my investigation so far. The girl’s involvement with James Rainey was known about, so I had to tell how Carse had gone to Timber Point to question him, stressing that the peddler was nothing more than a suspect at this point. Doc and I had decided not to say anything about the girl being pregnant. The fact should’ve been entered into the record, but it wasn’t relevant to the jury’s verdict and it would only have made tongues wag harder and impeded my inquiries. The jury consulted for about three minutes before delivering the expected verdict of death by strangulation at the hands of a person or persons as yet unknown.
Lester braced me before I could leave, and I had no choice but to answer more questions from him. He wasn’t satisfied until he’d squeezed out a few more minor details that he could print in the Sentinel, including a careful-worded quote about how I wouldn’t rest until the murderer was identified and arrested.
A small crowd had gathered outside the courthouse; I could see and hear them through the lobby window pestering Doc and Clyde and a couple of the jurymen. I avoided being pestered, too, by going through the building to my office at the rear, with the intention of leaving that way once things quieted down. Or thought I would. Only thing wrong with that notion was that the queen bee herself was waiting there for me, buzzing mad and set to sting.
“You’ve been avoiding me, Lucas Monk,” she said the instant I came in. “I don’t take kindly to being ignored.”
“Oh, now, Reba. I’ve been busy as the devil and I think you know the reason why.”
“Of course I know … now. That poor foolish girl murdered by the man she was planning to run off with—”
“We don’t know yet that he’s guilty—”
“—but he is long gone from Peaceful Valley by now, and I’m still here and so is the woman who wants to murder me. But you don’t seem to care about that.”
“Now look here, Reba. Just because I haven’t made an arrest yet doesn’t mean I don’t care about your welfare. I stopped by yesterday morning to see how you’re getting on. Didn’t Hannah tell you?”
“Yes, she told me. But you didn’t bother to make another visit or even to call.”
I wanted to say, You’re sore trying my patience, woman. But I swallowed those words and said instead, “I didn’t have the time. Been rushing around like a headless chicken ever since the Axthelm girl was found. There haven’t been any more attempts on your life, have there?”
“Not yet,” she said, purse-mouthed. “But that does not mean that creature isn’t planning another. Why, she’s capable of sneaking into the house in the middle of the night and murdering me in my bed.”
“I doubt that. Besides, you’ve got that old blunderbuss of Fred’s for protection.”
“And I’ll use it, if I have to. Don’t think I won’t. Just what are you doing to put an end to the witch’s reign of terror?”
Reign of terror. Just like Reba to lay it on twice as thick as necessary.
“Well?” she said when I didn’t answer quick enough.
“There’s not much I can do right now, except try to gather more information about Grace Selkirk.”
“More information.” Reba sniffed. “If you mean from Hannah, you may as well look elsewhere. Her memory is as porous as a sieve.”
“So she told you the Selkirk woman reminds her of someone she’s seen before.”
“Of course she told me. Why wouldn’t she, after you quizzed her about it?”
Pried it out of poor Hannah, no doubt. I should’ve known that would happen. Nobody can keep a secret from Reba for long, least of all a timid woman like Hannah Mead.
I said, “If she does remember, it might be important.”
“I don’t see how. The witch tried to poison me because of her lust for Titus Bedford and his money.”
“Maybe so. If you were the intended victim.”
“What? Of course I was. You’re not trying to say it was Hannah she was after?”
“I’m not trying to say anything. Looking at possibilities, that’s all.”
“Possibilities.” And another sniff.
“Be doing both of us a favor, maybe, if you do what you can to help jog Hannah’s memory.”
“It won’t do any good. I told you, her memory’s porous as a sieve—even more so now, the poor thing. She still hasn’t recovered from drinking that poisoned buttermilk.”
I let it go. You couldn’t prod Reba when she had her mind made up about something; trying only gave you a headache. I said, “I told you before I’ll get to the bottom of this business, and I will. You’ll just have to trust me. You can do that without hindrance, can’t you?”
Sniff number three. Her mouth was still puckered. And then her brow furrowed up and she said in an exasperated way, “Must you?”
“Must I what?”
“Chew on the end of your mustache that way. It’s a nasty habit. You’ve gnawed off so much hair on that
side it looks lopsided.”
I hadn’t realized I was nibbling on the droop again. But I would still have done it if I had. The gnawed-off hairs irritated her almost as much as the nibbling and the mustache itself, which suited me. But lopsided? Not so far as I could see in the face that stared back at me from my shaving mirror every morning.
I chewed a little while longer, not so much to get more of her goat as a declaration of independence, before I said, “All right, then. But before you leave, I’ve got some questions about Charity Axthelm might be you can answer.”
“What questions?”
“You told me last week that she and the peddler, Rainey, had run off together—”
“I thought then that they had.”
“How’d you find out? Not from the girl?”
“Hardly.”
“Who told you, then?”
“Nobody told me, at least not directly. I … happened to overhear her telling a friend of hers.”
“What friend?”
“The one who waits tables at the Valley Hotel. Laura Peabody.”
“Where’d you hear them talking?”
“In the park the day before she disappeared, last Wednesday. They had their heads together giggling about it. The girl was utterly shameless, God rest her soul.”
“That why you spread the word, because she was shameless?”
Reba went up in the collar at that. “I did not spread the word, as you put it. I mentioned it to you and one or two others, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh. When you told me, you said you weren’t surprised, that Charity Axthelm had a reputation for being a mite free with her favors.”
“A mite free! The girl handed out her favors like penny candy.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“She was less than discreet about her scandalous behavior.” One more sniff. “You know the way young men talk, Lucas.”
“Which young men in particular?”
“Well … I don’t like to carry tales…”
“I already know the names of some of her admirers. Devlin Stonehouse, Jack Vanner.”
“Yes, those two. And another whose name you’ll be surprised to learn.”
“Clyde Junior?”
The little gleam in Reba’s eye disappeared and her forehead wrinkled up; she can’t abide having somebody steal any of her gossipy thunder. “How do you know that? To whom have you been talking?”
“Never you mind how I know. Any other boys besides those three you can name?”
“Why ask me?” she said, pouty. “You seem to have plenty of sources of information.”
“None as reliable as you,” I said to placate her. “So. Any others you know about?”
It took her a clutch of seconds to get over her snit. Then the little eye-gleam came back. “There might be. One young scamp.”
“Who would that be?”
“Tyler Fix,” she said. “He was paying quite a bit of attention to the girl a while back.”
“How long a while? Where?”
“Around the time of the Fourth of July picnic. Laura Peabody wasn’t at all happy about it. She was sweet on him then, no doubt still is.”
Well, that explained why Laura hadn’t given me Tyler Fix’s name when I spoke to her. “How serious was it between Charity and Tyler?” I asked.
“If you mean were they sinning together, draw your own conclusions. Or ask him, if you’re of a mind to. Though I’m sure I don’t know why it should matter whom she was debasing herself with. It’s plain as the nose on your face who killed her, or should be.”
“If Rainey’s guilty, he’ll pay for it.”
“If? Of course he is. Just as guilty as Grace Selkirk is of poisoning my buttermilk.”
Reba can wear as thin on a man as a pair of old winter long johns. I shooed her out quick before she prodded me into saying something she might make me regret. She went, but not without one more sniff. The woman sniffed as much as a snuff-taker with a bad cold.
I waited five minutes, to give her time to leave the courthouse, and then beat it out of there myself the back way.
* * *
THERE WERE TWO customers in the Fix Mercantile Company, the Eldredge sisters arguing over whether or not the bolt of cloth they were studying on was suitable for a pair of window drapes. Grover was behind the counter, squinting down from under his green eyeshade at whatever he was writing in his ledger book. I didn’t see any sign of his brother.
The Eldredge sisters had heard about Charity Axthelm, naturally, being only a couple of stations below Reba when it came to back-fence talk. They threw a flurry of questions at me, all of which I deflected without letting them have anything they didn’t already know. They gave up finally, unsatisfied, and went on out without making up their minds about the drapery cloth.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff?” Grover asked when I stepped up to the counter.
“Something I want to ask Tyler. He around?”
“No, he’s out making a delivery. I don’t know when he’ll be back. Important, what you want to see him about?”
“Might be. Likely not.”
“Well … I’ll tell him you asked for him.”
“No need. I’ll stop back later.”
Grover laid down his pencil. The set of one of his sleeve garters didn’t suit him; he adjusted it. Fastidious man, Grover. “Terrible thing, the murder,” he said. “Never thought I’d see the day when a thing like that would happen in Peaceful Valley.”
“None of us did.”
“No question that peddler did it, is there?”
“Always a question until all the facts are in.”
“That button you showed me on Saturday—does it belong to him?”
“Might. Why? You remember somebody owns a coat that color?”
“No. Just wondered if that’s why you were asking.”
“Big part of my duties,” I said, “asking questions.”
When I stepped outside, a gust of ice-toothed wind bit into me and near knocked off my hat. Getting to be earflap and wool mittens time already. Tom Black Wolf had been right in his predictions so far, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had snow flurries by the weekend. Probably wouldn’t be heavy enough to stick, but it’d slick the streets and roads and remind you another long winter was on its way.
I turned upstreet and was coming on Miller’s Feed and Grain when Clyde Junior stepped out with a sack of oats slung over his shoulder. Sent in to fetch supplies for Karl Bruderstein, judging from the half-loaded buckboard drawn up nearby and the work clothes he wore under a heavy mackinaw. He was still working for Bruderstein, helping the farmer ready his place for winter.
He stopped when he saw me and said, “How, Mr. Monk,” in that near mocking way of his. But his voice was sober enough when he added, “I just heard what happened to Charity Axthelm. A real shame.”
“That it is. Whoever killed her will stretch a rope for it.”
“Folks seem to think it’s cut and dried who that was.”
“How things seem aren’t always how they are.”
“So you’ve got doubts. That why you asked me all those questions yesterday? You figure somebody local could’ve done it, somebody who’d been seeing her?”
I said, careful, “Could be.”
“It sure wasn’t me. What I told you about us was the truth.”
“There’re all sorts of motives for a crime of passion.”
“I never laid a hand on a woman in my life and I never will. That’s gospel, whether you believe it or not.”
“I say I didn’t believe it?”
“But you still consider me a suspect.”
“Didn’t say that, either.”
He shifted the sack of oats to his other shoulder. “I saw Jack Vanner slap a saloon girl around once for spilling a drink on him. You want a likely suspect, brace him if you haven’t already.”
“Just what I was on my way to do.”
“Luck to you, Mr. Monk. Keep your powder d
ry.”
“I’ll do that. And you keep your pecker in your pants.”
To his credit, Clyde Junior didn’t laugh. He tipped me a salute with his free hand and moved away to the buckboard.
FOURTEEN
JACK VANNER WASN’T hard to find. He was working with Otis Moore over on Elkhorn Street, repairing old Mrs. Wainwright’s sunporch. Whacking nails into a piece of plywood siding on a side wall when I got there. Neither him nor Otis was glad to see me, Otis because he made a point of saying he was in a hurry to finish the job before the snows came.
“What you want with me, Sheriff?” Vanner said, sullen, when I got him out of Otis’s hearing range. Good-looking scamp, I had to admit, even with sweat slicking his face and his mop of black hair tangled up from the wind. “I heard you plain Saturday night about leaving them Injuns alone. I ain’t seen Bandelier since then.”
“Pleased to hear it. But that’s not why I’m here. I reckon you heard about what happened to Charity Axthelm?”
“Yeah, I heard. So?”
“You don’t seem too broke up by it.”
“Why should I be? I hardly knew her.”
“That’s not what I been told. Word is you and her were seeing each other.”
“That’s a goddamn lie.”
“Is it?” I looked him hard in the eye. Wasn’t much to see there except insolence, but he didn’t match my stare for long. His gaze shifted sideways and he rubbed the sleeve of his jacket across his eyes to cover them. “Better not lie to me, Jack.”
Pretty soon he said, still not looking at me square, “So what if I was seeing her? That was months ago and it wasn’t for long.”
“Just how long?”
“Long enough to—”
“Long enough to what? Get what you were after from her?”
“Listen, what does it matter? I didn’t have nothing to do with her getting killed.”
“I didn’t say you did. Answer my question.”
“Hell, Sheriff, she was a tramp. She liked you, she’d put out for you. She liked me for a while. That’s all.”
The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave Page 9