Old Murders Never Die

by Marja McGraw

  Pete tried the door. It opened easily.

  The sun was climbing higher, but it was dark inside the cabin. Pete reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a flashlight. I saw an oil lamp sitting on a table and pulled matches out of my own pocket to light it. I was learning to come prepared for anything.

  He put a staying hand on my arm.

  “Pete, we saw him leave. And we need some light.”

  He thought for a moment before letting go of my arm. “I guess it can’t hurt. We’ll hear him if he comes back.”

  “We might not,” I said.

  “Yeah, we will. He’s not going to know anyone is here, and he won’t bother to be quiet. Besides, that horse of his always seems to be making some kind of noise.”

  Pulling the matches back out, I lifted the globe and lit the oil lamp. As I looked around, I saw that the cowboy had covered the few existing windows with something that resembled heavy burlap, and very little light was allowed in the cabin. Apparently he liked his privacy. I couldn’t think of any other reason.

  We began searching the cabin. “Be sure to put everything back exactly as you found it,” I said. “We don’t want him to know we were here.”

  He nodded, pulling out the drawer of a well-used but modern desk. He carefully sorted through the contents. The cowboy had obviously brought a few things of his own to make the cabin livable. It was one large room which made searching easier.

  There was a single bed sitting in the corner with a chest of drawers next to it. I headed to the chest of drawers. Opening each one, all I found were clothes, and not many of those. The drawers held a few pairs of jeans and some flannel shirts which were neatly folded. Lifting them, I didn’t find anything hidden underneath.

  I turned back to Pete, who was studying something that was tacked to the wall.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Some kind of crude map. It looks old.”

  Joining him, I took a close look at the map. It was similar to the one the sheriff had drawn, except it only showed the part of the area where we were standing. It indicated the Newton farm and the cabin, and not much else. Someone had drawn arrows on it, and written notes, but they were too faded to read in what little light we had. Pete aimed his flashlight at it, but the words were still too light to make out.

  “What do you think it is?” I ran my finger along the trail of arrows.

  “If I had to guess, I might think it was some kind of treasure map.” He watched my finger move across the arrows.

  “Maybe the cowboy thinks we’re after his treasure. No, that’s just too silly. He’s got a map. We don’t. And it’s not like a map that was mass-produced. This one is old and a one-of-a-kind.”

  “If he’s treasure hunting, well… People get a little crazy about gold and treasures. He might not be thinking clearly, which may not be a good thing for us.”

  “Let’s get busy and find that thingy for the car so we can get out of here. I’m not in the mood to be around a crazy person today.” I’d moved next to a small cook stove and I could still feel the heat radiating from it.

  Pete gave me a look that plainly told me he was rolling his eyes at me in his mind. I shrugged my shoulders.

  There weren’t too many more places to look, but I recalled finding the jewelry under a floorboard. “I think we should check for any hiding places.”

  He nodded and began checking for loose boards. There didn’t seem to be any, until…

  “It’s always the last place you look.” He squatted next to a board by the wall. He tried to pull it up, but it wasn’t happening. “Look around and see if you can find something to help pry this board up. There are too many years of grime and dirt keeping me from lifting it.”

  “How do you know it’s a hiding place?” I asked, while I looked for a knife or something like it.

  “Come take a look at it.”

  I did. All of the other boards had a couple of nails hammered in them, but this one didn’t. And there were three boards where the rest of the area had long ones sitting next to each other. Two of the three boards had nails in them. Pete was right. I stepped over to the counter that had been built in the cabin and picked up a sturdy-looking knife.

  He took it from me and began loosening the board. He used the knife to clean out some of the grit, and then began using the knife as a lever to lift up the board.

  I was excited to see what it held. Obviously the cowboy didn’t know it was there because it hadn’t been opened for probably over a hundred years.

  “Crap,” Pete said, lifting his head and listening. He dropped the board back in place.

  I could hear it, too. The cowboy was coming. I could hear him whistling. I blew out the flame in the oil lamp, and we moved to the door and opened it a crack. The horse and rider were just far enough away that we could slip out the front door and into the trees before he saw us.

  Pete glanced down at the knife in his hand. Wiping the dirt off on his jeans, he ran back inside and threw it on the counter, returning as fast as he could.

  We hurriedly closed the cabin door behind us and headed for the trees, moving out of sight only a moment before the cowboy rode in from the other direction on his horse.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We backed away quietly before turning to hurry away from the cabin. I appreciated the fact that it was so much easier to climb down the slope than it had been climbing up.

  Reaching the Newton farm, we stopped to catch our breath. I looked around, but there was no cowboy in sight. Bubba caught up to us and I gave him a few treats to hold him over until we arrived back at the house.

  “Pete, who did that cabin belong to?” I asked. “What does it say on the sheriff’s map?”

  “It’s back at the house. I’ll check it while we eat something.”

  Now he was thinking about food. With all the excitement, I’d forgotten about being hungry, and I’d long ago given up on eating the bread. I’d stuck it in the pocket of my sweatshirt, and it must have been squashed into a hard little ball.

  “We never found the car part.” He didn’t look too happy.

  “I know, but at least now we have an idea about the cowboy. We can go back either later today or tomorrow and continue searching.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t look too hopeful.

  Actually, I wasn’t too hopeful myself. “You know the part has to be somewhere in the cabin. Maybe we were too careful when we searched. Maybe we shouldn’t have worried about whether he knew we’d been there or not.”

  “No, because if he realizes we were there he’ll probably hide the ignition relay somewhere else.”

  “You know I hate guns, but maybe we need to confront him – take him by surprise. Maybe we can force him to give us the part.”

  “Not gonna happen, Sandi. What happens if he sees me first? We don’t know if this guy is nuts or what the deal is. He could shoot me, or he could shoot both of us. If we didn’t die right away, we’d be stuck out here to die slowly. I don’t want to pull out my gun again unless I have to.”

  He was right. We had to play our cards right or things could really get ugly in a hurry.

  While we walked back through the town, I looked around at the buildings. Once again they appeared old and dingy. Daylight wasn’t kind to them, rather like bright lights aren’t kind to a wrinkled face. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought about it before, but I had a digital camera in the car. I’d ask Pete to get it for me so I could take photos. I didn’t want to forget one single detail about Wolf Creek. This was a one-time adventure, as long as I didn’t think about the cowboy.

  We reached the house and decided to eat the last of the cereal rather than stuff ourselves with a huge breakfast. Actually, I didn’t think we’d have any more big breakfasts. Food was running low. We hadn’t planned on being stuck in a ghost town for any length of time, or at all. We thought we’d be within driving distance of a grocery store. The joke was on us.

  It was warming up rapidly, and we’d had
plenty of exercise. I took off my sweatshirt. Pete had taken off his windbreaker during our walk back to the house. We pulled back our makeshift curtains and tacked them to the wall so the cabin would air out and warm up.

  Bubba ate his dry food while we ate our cereal. He’d had plenty of exercise, too, and he was hungry. So were we, but we stuck with the cereal.

  “What now?” Pete asked.

  “We could look through more of the old houses,” I suggested.

  “We could. Or I could go fishing again.”

  I could tell he really wanted to go fishing. Why would he want to go fishing at a time like this? Because we had to eat. “You go ahead. I’ll work on the sheriff’s notes. Maybe while you’re gone, I’ll go back to the Ambrose place and look for more of his story.”

  “We should probably stay together,” he said. “I don’t want you caught alone if the cowboy comes back. Why don’t you go fishing with me?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll watch for him, and I won’t take any chances. The Ambrose house isn’t that far away from here. I’d take Bubba with me, but I know he’s going to want to go to the creek with you.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he glanced at the dog with what I hoped was fondness.

  “Okay, let’s see who lived in that cabin.” I picked up the sheriff’s map and laid it out on the table.

  Pete had used it so much that he moved his finger right to the cabin. “This was where Daniel Mack lived. Wasn’t he the loner? The one Croft suspected in the beginning?”

  I picked up the notes I’d been keeping and checked for Mack’s name. “Yes. He was the loner. That makes me even more curious about what’s under that floorboard. We’ve got to take another stab at searching that cabin.”

  “Good choice of words, sweetie,” he said.

  I shrugged and stashed my notes under the sheriff’s records.

  Pete left with Bubba following. I watched them walk down the path to the creek for a moment.

  After cleaning up the breakfast mess, I sat down with the sheriff’s records and began reading again.

  More time has passed, an nothin more has happened in Wolf Creek. Mebbe the trouble has passed with the time. Annie is still teachin the childrun, an she likes it. She says mebbe this is what she should have been doin all along. I see a happyness in her that was not there before the schoolin job. I do enjoy the smiles on her face when she talks about teachin.

  Josh Stewart stole a book from the general store. Judith Melton asked me to go light on him because at least he wanted to read. She thought that was a good thing for him to do. For his punishment, I made him cleen the store for Judith, an he has to do so for nigh on a month.

  The Doc and I still jaw about the killins, but we still aint got any clues about the killer. I will be goin down the mountain agin because I still want to see the lawman down there. I got to wonderin if they had any killins down the mountain, or is it jist us?

  Parents have mostly stopped walkin their childrun to school, but I have a feelin in my belly that this aint over yet. Doc and I are wonderin if this murderin coyote is just biding his time before he strikes agin. Or could he have moved on? Mebbe that cowboy who died was the killer. Could that be why things is quiet agin? Betwixt me and Doc, we are tryin to keep a close eye on the town. His thought is that I jist might be right about more trouble comin our way.

  I was having trouble concentrating on the sheriff’s words. Although I couldn’t explain it, my gut feeling was that things hadn’t ended yet either. Why had the town cleared out so suddenly? No, I believed there was more to come. I counted my blessings that I hadn’t lived in Wolf Creek in the 1880s.

  I decided to go ahead and walk over to the Ambrose place. Along with a search for more of the man’s mystery manuscript, I wanted to see if anything else was hidden there. We’d already found three hiding places. Ambrose had tucked his story away from prying eyes, the preacher’s wife had hidden her jewels, and Mack had a hidey hole in the cabin the cowboy was staying in. I decided that when this was over and I finally went home to California, I’d search my own house for hiding places. Who would have thought a town this small would harbor such secretive people?

  Walking out the front door, I did a quick but thorough search for the cowboy. I didn’t see him or his horse, so I headed for the Ambrose house. It wasn’t a long walk, but just to be on the safe side I stopped occasionally and casually watched for the rider and his horse. Nothing. It was quiet with the exception of birds singing their little hearts out in the trees. I didn’t even see one of those rabbits Bubba was so fond of chasing.

  The door to the Ambrose house was stuck again, but after a good hard kick, it flew open. I walked in and closed it behind me, not wanting anyone to know where I was. Yeah, I could talk a good game, but the cowboy had me spooked. He seemed to show up when I least expected it.

  The house was dark and cold, and I wished I’d brought my sweatshirt with me. I decided to do a search of the house before looking for more manuscript pages. This time I started with the kitchen, and I paid more attention to the everyday things that had been left behind.

  The freestanding kitchen cabinet had a couple of drawers and I pulled those out. One contained silverware and cutlery. It was a wide drawer with plenty of room. I lifted everything out and then replaced it when I didn’t see anything hidden underneath. The second drawer held a couple of yellowed old embroidered towels and some small containers. The containers weren’t marked, and they were empty. I had no idea what they might have held.

  Opening the cabinet doors, I saw a set of china, along with mouse droppings. Most of the dishes appeared to have broken over the years. They weren’t sturdy like the ones I’d seen in other houses, but costly and delicate. They probably hadn’t held up to time and all the changes in weather. I closed the door quickly.

  I took a close look at the floorboards while I moved around the kitchen. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, so I checked the rest of the room. There was a container that appeared to have held flour or sugar, or something similar. It was empty except for mouse droppings. I closed it and moved away. I’ve heard that mouse droppings can carry diseases, and I didn’t want to find out if that was true or not.

  Moving on to the bedroom, I looked inside the wardrobe, hoping to find another false floor in it like we’d found at the Croft house. It was a rather ornate wardrobe, but that’s all it was. No hidden compartment. I checked the dresser closely, but there wasn’t anything unusual about it either. The Ambroses had furnished their house with nice furniture which had probably cost them a pretty penny in its day.

  Again, I examined the floorboards before leaving the room. I glanced back into the room before leaving and saw something under the dresser. Walking back, I dropped down on my hands and knees to see what it was. Pulling it out, I was surprised to find a box with fading pictures painted on it. I opened it and saw the workings of a music box. It had quit playing music a long time ago. It was an awesome find, and I carried it out to the other room with me, deciding it was something I’d keep. Oddly, my decision made me feel a little like a thief. But realistically, there was no reason not to keep it.

  I hadn’t found anything like a hidden compartment, so it was time to look through the books. Heading straight for the bookcase, I began looking behind them. After all, that’s where Pete had found the pages I’d already read. I’d brought the flashlight and I used it to get a better look in the dark spaces behind the books.

  I’d just about given up when I saw the tiny edge of a piece of paper sticking out from under the bookcase. I worked the case away from the wall using the tug, pull and grunt method, and then tipped it back while I slid the paper out with the toe of my shoe. Grunting again, I let the bookcase gently fall back into place.

  “Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-gun,” I said to myself. “It’s another page of the story.” I hadn’t really expected to find more pages, but I’d had a lot of hope.

  Now the hunt was really on. No more Mrs. Nice Guy. I pulled
the books off the shelves and set them in piles in front of the fireplace. There were three books sitting on top of the bookcase, and as I lifted them down a piece of paper fluttered to the floor like a giant moth.

  Picking it up, I giggled. I couldn’t help myself. It was another page of Ambrose’s story, and I suddenly felt like I was on a treasure hunt. Picking up each book in turn, I began quickly thumbing through them, and each one held at least one page of the story. After gathering those pages and stacking them, I pulled the bookcase away from the wall. The thought briefly struck me that Charles Ambrose must have been hiding the pages from his wife, Antoinette. There were more pages behind the bookcase, sitting on the floor, and they were weighted down with…

  “Oh,” I said, quietly, picking up a very fancy knife. “Good grief! Every place we turn we either find a knife or we see one is missing. What is it with this town? Were these people hiding out here because they were all nuts?”

  The knife didn’t resemble the one that was missing from the Mueller home, which had been my first thought. It was, in fact, an old pocketknife. I opened it, and it still looked sharp, even after all these years.

  Carefully closing it, I put it in my pocket. I wanted to show it to Pete.

  Chapter Twenty

  Before leaving the Ambrose house, I took one more cursory look around to see if I could find any other hiding places. Nothing leaped out at me, so I gathered up the pages of Ambrose’s story and quietly opened the front door. I surveyed the area and didn’t see or hear the cowboy, so I headed back to the sheriff’s house, walking behind the town instead of down the main street.

  Looking back when I reached the end of town, I could just barely see the corner of the saloon. That was another place I wanted to explore. An old-time saloon held some interest for me. It was a place where people gathered, and probably a place where they let their hair down. I wondered if it was more of a saloon than a restaurant. Since this town was off the beaten path, I was sure the dining portion of the place probably didn’t do a lot of business. I would think single men would be more likely to frequent it than families.