“When did you see her last?”
“Community dance two weeks ago. But we never said a word. I didn’t want anything more to do with her or her with me.”
“The last time you saw her in private?”
“The last time she dropped her drawers for me, you mean?”
That didn’t set well at all. Neither did the insolent little sneer that went with it. I grabbed a handful of Vanner’s shirt and jacket and yanked him up close. “Don’t smart-ass me, boy. Somebody brutally murdered that girl. You, for all I know right now.”
The sneer wiped off and his Adam’s apple commenced to bob. “Hey, no, Sheriff. No. I’d never do nothing like that.”
“Show some respect then.”
“That peddler Rainey done it, everybody knows that—”
“Everybody don’t know it. I don’t know it.” I shook him a little. “Now when were you last with her?”
“I don’t remember exactly when. Three, four months … start of summer.”
“Sure it wasn’t five, six weeks ago?”
“No, not that recent. Three months at least, more like four.”
I let go of him, gave him a little push out of my space. “Who was she seeing five weeks ago?”
“I don’t know.”
“No idea at all? Nobody bragging like you?”
“I ain’t been bragging,” Vanner said. “I’m not that kind. I got me another girl now, lives over in Riverside—”
“I asked if you heard anybody bragging.”
“Uh-uh. Not in my hearing.”
“Where’d you and her go to do what you done?”
“Where? Down by the river south of town.”
“Not out to the old Crockett farm?”
“Place where you found her dead? Hey, no, never. Too far away. Only two times was down by the river, like I said. I swear it.”
I had that rust-brown button in my pocket, and I took it out and reached it up in front of his nose. “You own a coat or jacket this color?”
He blinked at it, about half cross-eyed. No startlement in the look, though, nor any recognition. “Never did. Why?”
“Know anybody who does? Think about it.”
Didn’t take him long to say, “I don’t recollect anybody, no.”
Well, hell. Otis had quit hammering and called over to us, wanting to know how much longer I’d be keeping Vanner. No longer. I was done with him, at least for the time being.
He was an unlikable cuss, Vanner, and sure capable of lying his fool head off to cover up a crime. But he didn’t have much backbone, nor much guile that I could see. Put a scare into a man like him and the truth leaks out around the edges of the lies he tells. The only leakage I could detect in his answers was his claim not to have bragged. He’d have puffed himself up to his friends first chance he had. A braggart and a bigot and a Commandment-breaker, but a murderer? Didn’t seem likely, but then no man can judge another well enough to know what he’s capable of under pressure, not even if he’s your best friend.
* * *
WHAT WITH ONE thing and another, I didn’t get to talk to Tyler Fix until late afternoon. It was after three when I went back to the mercantile, and Grover told me his brother had come back an hour or so before but was gone again. He didn’t know why Tyler quit early or where he’d gone. But he’d left the store wagon out back and it was still there, so he was afoot wherever he happened to be.
I had a look in the saloons and a couple of other places and didn’t turn him up. So maybe he’d headed home. The Fix place was three-quarters of a mile outside town on the northeast road, an easy enough walk. I’d have walked out there to check up if the weather had been better, but I was too tired to travel shank’s mare in that cold wind. Better to shiver while seated on my hocks. Even so, I was in no frame of mind to tussle with the Model T for such a short trip, so I went back to the mercantile and borrowed the store wagon from Grover.
Elrod Fix had bought the property when he moved to Peaceful Bend and started his business thirty years ago. Grover had seen to it that the place was kept up after Elrod passed on. House and barn wore fresh coats of whitewash, and the corral gate and fence posts had a sturdy new look.
There was a big shade tree in the front yard, which would make sitting on the front porch swing tolerable in the daytime summer heat. Pretty chilly to be sitting out there on a day like this, but that was where Tyler was. He didn’t move when I came clattering up in the wagon, or when I swung down and stepped up onto the porch.
What he was doing, sitting there, was brooding—the expression on his face told me that—and drinking Canadian whiskey from a two-thirds empty pint bottle. He didn’t say anything by way of greeting, just looked at me and then took another swig.
I cocked a hip against the porch railing. “Little early in the day for spirits. How come?”
“My business.”
“Might be mine, too, if it has to do with Charity Axthelm.”
Another swallow, almost emptying the bottle, and a back-of-the-hand swipe across his mouth. “What you want with me, Sheriff?”
“I been told you were sweet on the girl. True?”
“What if it is? I’m not the one killed her.”
“All right. Serious between you and her, was it?”
“My business,” Tyler said again.
“The law’s business, now. Serious or not?”
“Not on her part. Not after she took up with that son of a bitch Rainey.”
“Before she took up with him, then?”
“Would’ve been, I’d had my way.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Have your way with her.”
That jerked him forward, the swing swaying and creaking on its chains. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“A sassy one, but I won’t apologize for it. Well?”
“No. She wasn’t that kind.”
“Others say she was.”
“Who? Rademacher Junior? Jack Vanner? Lying bastards.”
“Never mind who. So you weren’t intimate with her?”
“I told you, no.”
“Never went out to the Crockett farm with her?”
“No!” He finished what was left in the bottle, looked at it, then flung it away over the railing a couple of feet to my right. Chucked it hard enough to wrench his shoulder, judging from the pain wince.
I was in a cranky enough mood as it was. “Come any closer to me with that bottle,” I said, sharp, “I’d’ve clouded up on you.”
“Go away, leave me alone,” he said, sullen now, his eyes glazed and a ball of spit oozing from a corner of his mouth. “I got nothing more to say to you.”
I had more to say to him, but it wouldn’t have got me anywhere, the shape he was in. Frustrating as hell, trying and failing to pry something even a little incriminating out of him and the others on Charity’s string. Seemed I was no closer to the truth now than when I’d started on Saturday. Little wonder I was feeling ornery.
Tyler shoved up off the swing, went stumbling into the house. I didn’t try to stop him. No damn use. I climbed back onto the wagon seat, drove away from there, and abused the poor horse some, I’m ashamed to say, on the way back to town.
* * *
DAY’S END WASN’T much better than the rest of it.
No word yet from Carse, for one thing. Not that I’d expected any this soon; chances were he wouldn’t get to Timber Point until late tonight or maybe not until tomorrow morning, and he’d need time to interview James Rainey. I’d told him to wire me if he learned anything important I should know right away. Earliest I could expect to hear from him was tomorrow sometime.
Sitting home didn’t improve my mood, either. Old Butch was in a growly mood with an upset stomach from something he’d eaten, kept passing gas that fouled the air enough so I had to open a window. The kitchen stove half-burned my supper, the beer I intended to drink with it had gone flat, and I had a caller I could’ve done withou
t seeing—Reverend Noakes, all aflutter over what he called “the vile eruption of sin and degradation in our fair community.” If he had any feelings at all for the dead girl, he sure didn’t communicate them to me.
And when I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep. Something kept itching at the back of my mind, something to do with the murder that I’d seen or heard someplace. But I couldn’t get hold of whatever it was. I told myself to quit trying to scratch what I couldn’t reach, it’d crawl out of my memory on its own eventually. Good advice, but not well taken enough so I could rest my bones much before midnight.
FIFTEEN
COURT WAS SITTING on Tuesday morning and I had to testify at the trial of a half-breed named Harker I’d arrested for rustling. Wasn’t much of a case—he’d pilfered and butchered one steer on account of him and his Piegan wife and brood of kids were close to starving. In the old days he’d likely have been hung without benefit of a trial, justice being damn harsh to Indian rustlers and horse thieves in particular. Now, in spite of my plea to Judge Peterson for leniency, Harker was sentenced to sixty days on the county work farm and fined fifty dollars that he’d have to work off. Justice was still harsh these days, too, seemed to me.
Turned out testifying wasn’t my only court chore for the day. There was a civil proceedings matter that had to be attended to—a summons for the next court sitting that the judge wanted delivered straightaway to the defendant in a boundary dispute, nine miles out in the county to the west. Like it or not, with Carse away and my other deputies not easily reachable, I’d have to do the serving myself. Judge Peterson is even feistier than I am. When he cracks his legal whip, a man jumps or finds himself stung.
None of this helped improve my disposition. Neither did the fact that I still hadn’t heard from Carse. Cranking up the flivver didn’t make me any crankier, at least; she started right away for a change. And I didn’t need my mackinaw or a lap robe to keep me warm this day as I rattled out of town on the northwest road. The sky was mostly clouded over, but it wasn’t near as cold as it had been, the wind blowing milder with a Chinook feel. Be good to think we might be in for a last taste of Indian summer, but I wouldn’t count on it. Montana weather is as changeable as a woman’s mind.
I was bumping and snorting along about five miles out when I came around a turning close to where a wagon road snakes in from the wooded foothills to the west. There was a wagon on it now, drawn up unmoving a hundred yards or so from the intersection. A long squint through the windscreen let me see it clear as I neared—an old, beat-up Murphy drawn by a mismatched pair of chestnut roans. Familiar, as were the two men up on the high seat. The Hovey brothers, Lige and Wes.
What wasn’t exactly familiar was what they had in the bed—a long, bulky, boxlike object roped in and covered by a tarpaulin.
They must’ve heard me coming and pulled up for a wait-and-see. Pedaling down, I turned off onto the wagon road. Likely I would’ve done it anyhow—the Hoveys were pea-brain troublemakers—but that object in the bed clinched it. From a distance, it bore a resemblance in size and shape to Henry Bandelier’s wooden Indian.
I braked the Model T at an angle in front of the wagon, blocking the road. I had my sidearm buckled on, as usual, but even if I’d been free of hardware there’d have been no cause for concern. The Hoveys were crafty rascals, but on the craven side and not dangerous. Neither Wes, who was holding the reins, nor Lige did anything but sit eyeballing me as I walked up to the wagon on the driver’s side. They put me in mind of bib-overalled statues as butt-ugly as that stolen hunk of wood.
“Morning, boys,” I said as I stepped up. “Long time since we set eyes on one another.”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff,” Lige said, “sure has been a long time.” His tone said he wished it had been a whole lot longer. He was the younger of the two by a couple of years, his beard as scraggly-patched as a dog with the mange.
Wes said, “Cold as a gambler’s eyeball, ain’t it?” His beard had more hair in it. That, and a scar alongside his nose, was about the only way you could tell him from his brother.
“Not so much today, down here,” I said.
“Sure was up to our place. Wasn’t it, Lige?”
“Sure was. Cold as a witch’s titty. Snow comin’ any day now.”
“Any day,” Wes agreed.
Both of them nervous as cats and trying hard not to show it.
I said, “Now that’s a curious sight.”
“What is?”
“Whatever you got tied in your wagon there. Wouldn’t be a wooden Indian, would it?”
“Huh?”
“The wooden Indian that was stolen last Friday night from in front of Henry Bandelier’s tobacco shop in town.”
Wes’s eyelids flapped up and down. “No, sir, Sheriff, it sure ain’t. Who’d want to steal a cigar store Indian?”
“We ain’t never stole nothing in our lives,” Lige said.
“Uh-huh.” I took a couple of steps nearer to the bed. They turned their heads and stretched their necks to watch me. Up close, the thing tied in there didn’t have a shape at all like the Cuba Libre eyesore. Which dashed the small hope I’d had that Lloyd Cooper had misidentified the thieves and Tom Black Wolf and Charley Walks Far were innocent after all. This appeared to be a big oblong box. There were holes and rips in the tarp, and through one I could see bare, weathered wood. Something else showed through another tear. I widened that one so I had a better look.
“Well, I’ll be,” I said, surprised. “An outhouse.”
“Yes, sir, that’s what she is. An outhouse, right enough.”
“Can’t mistake that half-moon cut in the door,” Wes said.
“No, sure can’t,” Lige agreed.
I said, “Taking it out for an airing, are you?”
Lige laughed false. “Be a couple of jugheads if that’s what we were doing, wouldn’t we, Sheriff.”
“Then why are you toting it?”
Wes started to answer, but Lige cut him off. “Fact is,” he said, “we’re takin’ her over to Charley Hammond’s place.”
“That so? What for?”
“Well, now, we—” Wes broke off because Lige elbow-poked him in the ribs and shied him a look as if telling him to put a hitch in his lip.
“She don’t set the ground right, that’s how come,” Wes said. “She’s got warped boards and chinks in her sides. Wind comes whistling through them chinks on a cold night, it like to freeze your arse where you sit.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, old Charley’s a pretty fair carpenter,” Lige said, “so we figured to have him fix her up.”
“He lives some ways up valley, as I recall. Seems like it would’ve been easier on you boys to take the outhouse to Otis Moore’s shop in town.”
“Sure it would. But he’s gettin’ on in years, Charley is, and we’re askin’ a favor, so we come to the idea of bringin’ her to him instead.”
I nodded as if I might believe him, which I didn’t. Then I said, “How come you closed off the bottom end?”
“Sheriff?”
“Bottom end there. Closed it off with boards, didn’t you?”
“Well, now,” Lige said, and then he just sat there looking stupid. So did Wes.
“Tell you how it looks to me,” I said. “Looks like you boys built yourself a big packing case out of your privy. Now why would you go and do a thing like that?”
Wes hawked and spit over the side of the wagon, away from where I stood. “It ain’t no use tryin’ to fool you, Sheriff. Lige and me closed off that bottom end, right enough, but it wasn’t to make a packing case. No, sir. It was something else entire we made outen that outhouse.”
“Such as?”
“A coffin. We made us a coffin.”
“Did you, now. Who for?”
“Old Bryce. Our hired man.”
“You mean to tell me you got him inside there?”
“His poor remains, yes, sir. He up and died last night. Had him the ague and it turned into new-mon
ia, and he up and died on us. Man weighed near two hundred fifty pounds, if he weighed an ounce. So there we was with a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound, six-foot-and-three-inch-high corpse and no way and no place to give him a proper Christian burial.”
“How come no way and no place?”
“Well, first off, we didn’t have no spare lumber to make a coffin and neither of us is handy at carpentry work besides. And we couldn’t just plant him without a box.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Big and high as he was, why, he fit inside the outhouse just about snug. Couldn’t have hammered up a better coffin from scratch if we’d tried.”
“Why didn’t you bury him on your property?”
“Sheriff?”
“Him and the privy both. Why bring him on down here?”
Wes didn’t have an answer for that. But Lige did, such as it was. “On account of we didn’t want to lose the outhouse,” he said. “Had we planted ’em both, why, then we wouldn’t have had one with winter comin’ on. Couldn’t build us a new one on account of we didn’t have no lumber, like Wes said.”
“Where were you fixing to bury him?”
“Sheriff?”
“Old Bryce. Where’d you intend to put him down for his final resting place? Couldn’t be the town cemetery. There’s a law against burying bodies there without a coffin and a permit.”
His answer for that was even feebler, so feeble it brought him a kick from his brother down low on the shin where Wes thought I couldn’t see. “Potter’s fishing hole,” he said.
“Bury a dead man in a fishing hole?”
“No, sir,” Wes said, “not in Potter’s hole, near it. After we bought us a plain wooden box in town. We figured a permit ain’t needed for burial down there.”
“That’s what we figured, all right,” Lige said. “Potter’s hole was old Bryce’s favorite fishing spot in all of Peaceful Valley. Rode on down there every chance he had.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Right before he croaked on us, he said as how he’d like to be buried down by Potter’s fishing hole. Can’t deny a man his dying wish. So me and Wes, we pulled the outhouse down and put old Bryce into her and closed off the bottom and now we’re headed to town for the box and then on down to Potter’s hole to find a shady spot—”
The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave Page 10