He sounded excited now, the ink in his veins flowing hot. I was some worked up myself, but I didn’t let it show. If there’s one lesson all my years in law enforcement have taught me, it’s not to jump to conclusions. It sure seemed like Grace Selkirk was Annabelle Carter in disguise, and it’d be a feather in my cap if I was to be the one to bring a lethal female predator to justice, but I had to move slow until I had more facts and evidence.
“There happen to be a photograph of her in the Denver Post?” I asked.
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“You wouldn’t still have the issues the crime was written up in down there, would you?” Lester was something of a journalistic pack rat. A closet in the back room was stuffed with old newspapers, local and out-of-town, and he had more in his basement at home.
“I might have,” he said. “I’d have to do some combing to find out. You’re after more details?”
“As many as I can get. A full description, if there is one.”
“So your interest has to be pretty important,” Lester said. “You sure you can’t tell me what it is? I won’t print anything you ask me not to, you have my word on that.”
“Your word’s always good with me. But I got to keep it to myself for the time being. If it pans out, you’ll be the first to know and that’s a promise.”
“Just tell me this. Can I sow some journalistic oats with it, if and when? And I don’t mean in the Sentinel.”
“Didn’t figure you did.”
“Well? Is the answer yes?”
“Might well be.”
He blew out his breath with a sound like a wind whistle. “My God,” he said, “how I would dearly love a genuine scoop! The murder of the poor Axthelm girl is the biggest thing to happen in Peaceful Valley in the dozen years I’ve owned the Sentinel, but it’s more or less local news. I don’t mean to sound callous, but … well, you know if anybody does how I feel.”
That I did. Lester fancies himself a big-time journalist trapped in a small-time journalist’s bailiwick. Long as I’ve known him he’s been on the lookout for a major news story, the kind that’ll get him noticed by one of the premium papers in this state or some other and lead to the sort of newspaper work he craved to be doing. I’d always figured it would never happen, that he’d be here until he died or somebody made a buyout offer for the Sentinel he couldn’t refuse, and I reckon so did he.
I said, “If you’d hunt for those issues of the Denver paper soon as you can, I’d appreciate it.”
“Right away. Might take me a while—they’re likely to be in my house, if I have them at all. There’s something else I can do, too. I know a reporter on the Post—I’ll send him a wire.”
“Good man, Lester. Thanks.”
He responded to that with a deep-grooved grin and headed straight to his storage closet.
* * *
THERE WAS NOTHING more I could do right now about Grace Selkirk, except make sure she hadn’t suddenly decided to pull up stakes. If she was the fugitive Annabelle Carter and she hadn’t disappeared again since I questioned her on Friday, chances were she intended to stay put for the time being. Keep out of Hannah Mead’s way, get her hands on a pile of Titus Bedford’s money, finish him off with a dose of potassium cyanide, and disappear again.
She’d gone from two big cities, Kansas City and Denver, to small-town Peaceful Bend and kept to herself while she set her sights on fresh prey. Where she’d been and what she’d been up to the past three years was anybody’s guess. But she’d picked the wrong backwater to hole up in, and fate or whatever you wanted to call it had stepped in and forced her into a decision: leave without Titus’s money or stay put and take bold action to get rid of the woman who might recognize her. Picking the latter was her arrogant mistake, whether she knew it yet or not. Likely she still believed she was safe enough here, even with a hick sheriff’s eye on her—a hick sheriff who to her mind wasn’t smart enough to figure out that Hannah Mead and not Reba Purvis had been the primary target of the buttermilk poisoning.
My excuse for stopping by the Bedford Funeral Parlor was to ask Titus if he was planning to come to the Commercial Club tomorrow night. Wednesdays is the night when the local muck-a-mucks gather to play cards, drink a little too much beer, and listen to the Hot Stove League tell lies about their adventures when they were young and full of piss and vinegar. He said he’d be there for our usual game of billiards. Grace Selkirk was there at the parlor, all right, attending to her trimming—an ironical profession, when you thought about it, for a woman who might well be guilty of filling more than one coffin.
It was on my mind that I ought to warn Titus his life might be in danger, but I didn’t do it. Calculated risk. He wouldn’t believe me without more than speculation and circumstantial evidence, and if it turned out I was wrong about her, I’d be opening up a snake’s nest that was liable to get me bit. He ought to be safe enough until I could be certain. So I told myself, anyhow.
There was a wire from Ridgley waiting for me when I got back to the courthouse. Mavis said it’d been delivered over an hour ago. About time, I thought, and ripped open the envelope.
RAINEY NOT OUR MAN STOP BACK TOMORROW NIGHT EIGHT PM TRAIN STOP
CARSE
Short and none too sweet. “Rainey not our man.” Carse must be sure, else the wording wouldn’t be so definite. Damn! I’d had my doubts about the peddler’s guilt, but it would’ve made my job a sight easier if he had strangled the girl and been made to confess. Now it seemed we had another murderer besides Grace Selkirk in our midst. Which of the young sports I’d spoken to who’d sampled Charity Axthelm’s favors was it? Or, hell, was the guilty man somebody else entirely?
* * *
I WAS SITTING in the old Morris chair in my parlor, Butch sleeping on the floor beside me and passing snores instead of gas for a change, when Lester came knocking. He had a thin fistful of newspapers that he waved like flags when I let him in.
“Two issues of the Post,” he said. “All I could find at home. Not much in either that I didn’t tell you this afternoon, I’m afraid.”
“Meaning no description of Annabelle Carter?”
“Just a general one.”
I squinted through the news stories in the two issues. The victim’s name was Bowringer, Horace H. Bowringer, and his factory business had been the manufacture of boots and other footwear for men. His body had been found in his bedroom, dead two days from cyanide poisoning. By then Annabelle Carter, seamstress, reputed to be his “inamorata,” was long gone without a trace. The amount of the cash missing from his safe was more than Lester had remembered, over six thousand dollars.
Annabelle Carter was described by an acquaintance of Bowringer’s as “an attractive, buxom brunette of slender build, possessing a flair for colorful hats and fashionable clothing.” Buxom wasn’t a word I’d have used to describe Grace Selkirk, but in those loose black dresses she wore, it was difficult to tell what her shape was underneath.
“Nothing in either issue about Kansas City,” I said when I was done reading.
“No, that was reported later. I ought to have the issue or issues, but I can’t find one anywhere.” Lester made a rueful face. “My basement is a mare’s nest, much as I hate to admit it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I wired the Post reporter I know, Jordan Unger, asking for details about the Kansas City homicide. And for as complete a description of Annabelle Carter as exists in their files—identifying marks, habits, peculiarities other than cold-blooded murder for profit.”
“Good. How soon you reckon you’ll hear back?”
“Hard to say. Jordan was a friend when we both worked on the Cheyenne Leader, but I haven’t had any contact with him in years. I marked the wire ‘Urgent’ and asked for a quick reply, but I suppose it depends on how busy he is. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from him, Lucas.”
All I could do was hope it was soon.
* * *
WHAT WITH THE Grace Selkirk sit
uation and Carse’s statement about James Rainey to occupy my thinking, the notion I had about what happened to Henry Bandelier’s wooden Indian had gone right out of my head. But it came back quick enough on Wednesday morning. My route to the courthouse took me down Main past Bandelier’s tobacco store, and when I got to within viewing distance I yanked up short and stood staring.
Be damned if that butt-ugly Cuba Libre eyesore wasn’t back where it used to be, on the boardwalk smack next to the shop’s front door.
EIGHTEEN
“THEY BROUGHT IT back in the middle of the night,” Bandelier said. He didn’t sound happy about it. Anger still gleamed in his beady eyes and his mouth was pinched tight when it wasn’t spewing words. “I came to open up a few minutes ago and there it was.”
“Who brought it back?”
“Well, who do you think? The same two who stole it.”
“Anybody see them this time?”
“How should I know? Nobody told me if so.”
“Jury’s still out on whether or not Tom Black Wolf and Charlie Walks Far stole it in the first place,” I reminded him.
“Not as far as I’m concerned. Those two bucks are responsible, all right. For stealing it and for defacing it.”
“Defacing?”
“Did you take a close look before you came in here, Sheriff?” Bandelier said, kind of contemptuous.
“Didn’t examine it, no. Looks just the same to me.”
“It’s not the same. Come on, I’ll show you.”
I went back out on the boardwalk with him. He half-squatted next to the wooden Indian and jabbed a finger at the base back toward the rear. “There,” he said. “See what those damned heathens did?”
I bent for a look. The sun was out again today, pale and frosty and playing peekaboo from behind a scud of clouds; a ray of it fell on the spot where Bandelier was pointing, so I could make out the thin slice line clear enough. The line was about eight inches long, running from the bottom of the base up one of the poorly carved legs. I knew right away what it was. Saw cut that had been filled in and painted over. Expert repair job, too. When the sun hid behind one of the clouds, you could barely see the line.
“I wouldn’t call that defacing,” I said. “Fixed neat like that it’s hardly even vandalism.”
“Oh, sure, stick up for the Flatheads like always. Dammit, they near ruined it. And for no damn reason except pure meanness.”
“So you think Tom Black Wolf and Charlie Walks Far stole the statue, took it all the way out to the reservation, cut the slice in the bottom there, repaired it, and then brought it back again—all out of pure meanness. Doesn’t make much sense when you look at it that way, Henry.”
Bandelier sputtered some. “I don’t see any other way to look at it.”
I did, maybe, if the notion I’d had yesterday was right—and I was beginning to think it was, pretty close anyway. But I was not about to share it with Bandelier, now or ever.
“If it was those two,” I said, “why do you suppose they brought the statue back last night?” That was the one question my notion didn’t account for, though it might when I had more time to think on it. “Big risk stealing it in the first place, double the risk hauling it back and setting it up again.”
“Who knows what a war-whoop will do? They don’t think the way a white man does, if they think at all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Probably got scared you’d finally arrest them. But I suppose you won’t bother to do that now, either.”
Cost me an effort, but I let the insult slide past. We’d drawn a little knot of onlookers as surprised as I’d been that the statue had come home to roost, and while Bandelier and I were talking quiet, or at least I was, some of them were within earshot. If Bandelier realized he had an audience, he’d puff up the way he had in Monahan’s on Saturday night and make a loud anti-Indian, anti–Lucas Monk speech. Before that could happen, I took a grip on his elbow and steered him back inside the store.
“You got your statue back, Henry,” I said then. “That ought to be enough to satisfy, the damage being as minor as it is.”
“Well, it isn’t enough.” He started for the counter, then swung back to face me again, frowning. “All those questions you asked about my Indian yesterday, whether it was solid or hollow. You have some idea why those heathens cut into it the way they did?”
“No. I just figured it’d be easier to haul around if it was hollow.”
Pretty flimsy, that spur-of-the-moment explanation, but Bandelier didn’t question it. He went back behind the counter, saying sour, “I don’t suppose they’ll ever be punished for what they did.”
“They will if I can prove them responsible. I’m not done investigating, Henry. But right now I’ve got more important business to attend to. Or have you forgotten what happened to the Axthelm girl?”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to, with the whole town talking about it.” Then, half sulky and half snotty, “You expect to get to the bottom of that, too, someday, I suppose?”
The devil with you, Bandelier, I thought on my way out. You and that public nuisance of yours both.
* * *
THE PEACEFUL BEND High School was on a rise of ground above Municipal Park, overlooking the ball field—a redbrick building the city fathers had scratched up the funds for a dozen years back to replace the old wood frame schoolhouse. It had boosted attendance from the outlying areas, being bigger and having more classrooms. So had the hiring of two new teachers, both of them well thought of, and an expanded curriculum. Took some of the burden off Miss Mary Ellen Belknap, too, and allowed her to concentrate on her best subject, history, and on establishing the school library.
I thought I might have to wait to see her until she finished teaching a class, but she turned up alone and busy in the small room that served as both her office and the library. The door was open, so I took off my hat and stepped in without knocking, clearing my throat as I did to let her know she was about to have company.
She looked up from a stack of papers on her desk and peered at me through her spectacles. She was a little thing, Mary Ellen, not an inch over five-foot, gray-haired now but her blue eyes as bird-bright as ever. “Good morning, Sheriff Monk. What brings you visiting?”
“A small matter you can help me with. All right if I close the door for privacy?”
“As you wish.”
I closed it and went to stand in front of her with my hat brim twitching around in my fingers. She was only about ten years my elder, but when I saw her in school like this, I always felt like I was fifteen again and about to be punished for truancy or pitching spitballs at girls.
“Have you found out who did that awful thing to the Axthelm child?”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it.”
“I should hope so. But that can’t be why you’re here. I don’t believe I saw Charity more than twice since she graduated, and with hardly a passing word between us.”
“No, ma’am. It has to do with Tom Black Wolf.”
“Yes? The theft of Mr. Bandelier’s wooden Indian, I expect. I find it difficult to believe that Tom and the Walks Far boy would resort to such foolishness.”
“Unless they felt they had a proper reason.”
Miss Mary Ellen sighed. “Tom has always been such a good boy,” she said. “Intelligent, well-mannered, respectful of others’ property. That is why I have allowed him to borrow our books from time to time since his graduation. He never abused the privilege before, but now … well, it seems that I may have misjudged him.”
“How do you mean, he abused the privilege?” I asked.
“The last group of books he borrowed were overdue by more than a week when he finally returned them. He has never kept books past the due date before.”
“When did he return them?”
“Early yesterday morning.” While I was in court, probably, which is why I’d missed seeing him. “But that is not all. I’m afraid he also mutilated one of the books.”
/> “He did what?”
“You heard me correctly, Sheriff Monk. He tore a photograph out of an expensive history book. Oh, he admitted to having done it—an accident, he said—and he carefully pasted it back in, but it is wrinkled and smudged.”
“You have the book handy?”
“On the table there by the door, the large one bound in buckram.”
I went and got it and looked at the title. Uh-huh. Now that notion of mine was about ninety-eight percent confirmed. And when Miss Mary Ellen told me where the damaged page was and I looked at that, the number went up a notch to ninety-nine percent.
“I’d like to borrow this myself for a while,” I said. “With your permission, of course.”
Delicate little lines radiated out from the corners of her eyes and mouth. “For what purpose? Surely you don’t intend to charge Tom with damaging school property as well as with theft?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then why do you wish to borrow the book? It needs to be properly repaired.”
“I’ll be careful with it. As careful as if it were my own.”
She didn’t put up any more argument. “Very well, then. I’m sure you have a good reason for wanting it—and for evading my questions.”
Smart as a fox, Miss Mary Ellen. I still felt about fifteen and some chastened when I left her office with the book tucked under my arm.
* * *
THERE WAS NOTHING waiting for me at the courthouse that called for immediate attention. In my office, I sat for a little time looking through the book. Then I pulled the telephone over and had Mavis ring up Abe Fetters at the reservation store.
“Just wondering how Chief Victor is coming along, Abe.”
“Guess you haven’t heard,” he said. “He’s gone to the happy hunting grounds.”
“Died, eh? When?”
The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave Page 12