Old Murders Never Die

by Marja McGraw

  “You’ve said that before. I have to admit it does feel weird when we go through these people’s homes. Why would they just walk off and leave their things?”

  “We’re beginning to repeat ourselves. I’ve asked myself that question a dozen times over the past week. I just don’t get it.” I looked around the house, trying to make some sense out of what I saw.

  “Have you finished reading the sheriff’s book yet? Maybe everything will be explained by the time you finish it.”

  “I should just skip to the end, but I want to know what else happened around here. And if I don’t finish it, I’ll take it with us when we leave. I can read it while we’re on the road.”

  “If we get out of here,” he said.

  “Okay, you’re beginning to scare me. Quit it.”

  He smiled. “I’m just messin’ with ya. We’ll be out of here one way or the other by tomorrow. Or the next day, at the latest. I promise. If I have to carry you down the mountain on my back, we’ll get out of here. But if I have my way, we’ll be driving out with the cowboy tied to the hood of the Jeep.”

  “You know what we haven’t seen around here? Buckboards and wagons. You’d think there’d at least be a couple left behind.”

  “I did find one wagon,” Pete said, “but it had fallen apart from being out in the weather for so long.”

  “Where’d you see that?”

  “At the Newton farm. It was sitting next to some remains that might have been a barn at one time.”

  “Well, you’d think a barn would have passed the test of time, wouldn’t you? How could an outhouse last all these years and not a barn?” I hadn’t thought about barns until Pete mentioned finding the remains of one. There should have been more buildings like barns, although I supposed there wouldn’t be any in town. Maybe we’d see one out at the Sutter Ranch. That was another place we hadn’t looked at yet, but it was much farther out. I wasn’t sure that we’d ever make it to that place.

  “Don’t know, and I don’t really care. Besides, if the people left in such a hurry, they’d have taken all of their wagons with them. How do you think they got out of here?”

  “You’re right.”

  Wandering out to the kitchen, I found the doctor had a more expensive cook stove than we’d seen in the other houses. It appeared to be a bit more modern than the others, and it didn’t look like it had been used all that much. I could picture the ladies around town bringing him meals, maybe as payment for doctoring services. However, there was a pot on the floor next to the stove. It looked like it might have fallen off. Picking it up, I found that something had apparently burned and stuck to the inside, just like at one of the other homes. He really must have left in a hurry.

  “Sandi, I may have found something that you’ll be interested in.”

  Turning, I saw he’d opened the front of a roll top desk. He was holding some papers.

  “What are those?” I asked, walking toward him.

  “They appear to be death certificates.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Death certificates. Pete had my full attention. I hurried over to him to take a look. He handed me a few and examined the rest of them himself. Actually, there were quite a few, considering the size of the town.

  I started looking at them. They weren’t like official death certificates that you’d see today. They were more like records the doctor kept as a formality. He chronicled each death on a separate sheet of paper. Emily Stanton had a son who’d been stillborn. The Lippons had a teenage daughter who’d died of complications from influenza. Mrs. Thelma Cosgrove died of old age, and she was only sixty-five. People didn’t live as long back then. Sixty-five isn’t considered old age today. I read somewhere that sixty is the new forty, or something like that. Faith Stewart, Molly Stewart’s mother, died of consumption, which we call tuberculosis today.

  I reached out to Pete for more pages. He rolled the pages up and stuck them in his pocket.

  “We’re wasting time,” he said, clearing his throat. “We can read these back at the house. Let’s finish looking through the doctor’s place and get moving.” I wondered if he was tiring of the whole situation. He was beginning to sound gruff. Or maybe it was my imagination.

  “Okay.” We still had a little more searching to do, and it had suddenly become late afternoon. I guess it hadn’t been that sudden, but it seemed like the time had flown by. “Should we try the cowboy’s cabin one more time before we head back to the house?”

  “No. Let’s worry about that in the morning. We’ll get up earlier and try to catch him before he leaves for wherever it is he goes every day.” He turned away from me and looked through the rest of the desk, but he didn’t find anything else of interest.

  We did a quick search for hiding places, as was becoming our habit, but we didn’t find anything and we left, climbing back out the window.

  “This town would be an antique dealer’s paradise,” I said, taking one more quick look through the window.

  “Where’s Bubba?” Pete asked.

  “I don’t know.” I looked around, but couldn’t see him, so I whistled. Maybe I can’t sing, but I can whistle with the best of them.

  He didn’t come, so I walked around the buildings and into town. Bubba was lying in the middle of the street, sleeping. I whistled again. He lifted his head and looked at me, and I immediately realized something was wrong. I ran to him, with Pete following me.

  He was drooling, a lot. He stood up and started to walk with us, but he looked miserable. The drooling wouldn’t stop. It frightened me.

  “Pete…”

  “Don’t get excited yet. Let’s get him back to the house and look him over.”

  Pete kept walking, but I noticed he’d picked up the pace. Bubba kept up with us, which I took as a good sign. He was way too big for us to carry, so I was glad he could walk.

  “What do you think is wrong?” I asked.

  “I have an idea, but wait until we get back to the house. I need to look him over closely.”

  I was beginning to feel a little panicky. There were no veterinarians around, so what could we do if he was really sick? The thing that kept me going was that Bubba kept going. He wasn’t acting like he was at death’s door. I took a quick look at him and the drool was pouring out of his mouth. Panic took two bold steps forward.

  Pete patted me on the back. “Don’t worry yet.”

  “Okay.” Yeah, like I wasn’t worrying.

  We arrived back at the house and he immediately had Bubba sit. He pulled the dog’s mouth open. I watched from the sidelines, having no idea what he was looking for. Maybe he thought the dog had something in his mouth that was causing the problem.

  “Do you see anything?” I asked.

  “No, but I’m not done looking yet.”

  “Well, what are you looking for?”

  He glanced at me before reaching in and moving Bubba’s tongue to the side. Interestingly, the dog had stopped drooling. Apparently satisfied that there wasn’t anything foreign in the dog’s mouth, Pete let him stand up. And the drooling began again.

  “This same thing happened with one of the K9 dogs when I was a cop. The vet explained that if a dog has mouth pain, they sometimes forget to swallow and they drool a lot. He said that a bug bite can have the same effect if the bite is in the mouth or around the neck. When you distract them, like I did, they temporarily stop drooling.”

  “So you think maybe something bit him?”

  “It’s possible.” He began to feel around Bubba’s neck.

  “But he stopped drooling for a minute.”

  “That’s because I was distracting him.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. You just mentioned that.”

  The dog stood quietly and drooled while Pete examined him. He didn’t wag his tail, but he didn’t act sick either. The constant slobbering seemed to be the main issue.

  “Here it is,” Pete said, feeling along Bubba’s neck. He leaned closer and examined the space along the front of t
he dog’s neck. “It appears that something has taken a bite out of him. There’s a lump here.”

  “You mean like an animal or something? A squirrel or maybe a rabbit?” That was worrisome because they could carry diseases, like rabies.

  “No, I mean like a spider, or maybe a scorpion. We are in Arizona, you know.”

  “Oh. So what do we do?”

  Bubba dropped to the floor and rolled onto his side, continuing to drool. It was like someone had turned on a fountain. He was panting, but not hard.

  “All we can do is watch him and make sure he’s comfortable. Hopefully it will clear itself up.”

  “I’m going to start something for dinner. I think I’ll see if I can figure out how to slow cook the beans on this stove. Will you keep an eye on Bubba?” Pete seemed to be in control, and I needed to do something. Anything.

  “Of course.” He sat down on the floor by my favorite dog, who was beginning to enjoy the attention. I noticed he moved his huge paw onto Pete’s lap and allowed him to pet it. Bubba usually seemed to be in some type of competition with Pete for my attention, but the past few days had been different. It was like the two were pulling together to make things better. They were bonding.

  While I opened the beans and the diced tomatoes, I kept an eye on the pair. Pete seemed to be enjoying the quiet time with the dog. I built a fire in the stove, but I kept it small, thinking the stove wouldn’t heat up so much. After I filled a pot with the beans, tomatoes and some spices, I set it on the stove to heat. I hoped the meal would be at least somewhat palatable, and not too bland.

  Out of the blue, I had a thought about how homey the sheriff’s house had become – Pete and Bubba on the floor, with Pete constantly petting the dog, and the aroma of dinner cooking. We had no couch to sit on, no television or radio, and no amenities of the modern world. And yet I felt good about the house. Joseph and Annie Croft had been happy in this home. Maybe they’d left a little of their essence behind.

  I stirred the beans and turned to Pete. Bubba had laid his head on Pete’s knee and drool ran out of the side of his mouth, but he looked comfortable. I saw Pete pull the death certificates out of his pocket, trying not to disturb Bubba in the process.

  “Here, I’ll take those,” I said.

  “No, I want to look through them. Why don’t you read some more of the sheriff’s book while dinner cooks?”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him take one of the certificates and move it to the bottom of the stack. He read the next one and moved it to the bottom.

  I picked up the sheriff’s records, now intent on the 1881 ledger.

  He started off talking about some rowdy children who were a little too rambunctious for his tastes. I had a feeling they were probably worked up over the upcoming event.

  The town picnic is tomorrow. Everbody is real excited about it. We all need somethin to take our minds away from troubles. William, Annie’s pa, tole me he found footprints outside his house. He said that it werent no varmint that Judith heard outside. We had jist enough rain so that the prints stood out real good. It is a shame, but the prints could fit jist about any man in Wolf Creek. I would have liked to shorten the list of who it culd could of been. I couldn’t see a thing about them that was special or diffrent.

  My Annie jist came in an she was purty excited. Antw Mrs. Ambrose gave her a dress that she did not want anymore. Annie says it is too long, but that it will be fine for the picnic. She will jist have to hold up the hem some. I aksed if she could fix it, but she says there aint time tonight. She says it is the most purty dress she has ever owned. She held it up in front of her, and the color is almost the same as her eyes. It was kind of startlin to me, but it was a good startlin. It made her eyes jist pop right out at me. My luvely darlin is happy, an that makes me happy. She still seems to be feelin a might poorly, but she tells me that she is really very fine. I guess I would have to trust her on this thing.

  After a year of death and murders, and a winter of cold and snow, I was sure these hardworking people really were ready for a day of fun. For just a moment, I wished I could have been there to see the picnic. I tried to think where they might have held the event. The only spot I could think of was the area between the town and the Newton farm. Anyplace else would have probably been too far out. With all the trees, and I was pretty sure there’d been plenty back then, too, it limited the places for group gatherings.

  I also wondered if people like the Ambroses and the Muellers would have attended the picnic. It seemed like those two couples kept to themselves, from what I’d read.

  People have been comin to the house all day to aks questions about the picnic. Can we bring this? Can we bring that? Samuel Sutter even wanted to know if we could have a horse race. I tole him if he wanted to take charge, it was fine by me. I do not suspishion he would have much com comp many takers since the whole town knows how fast his black stallion is.

  I can hardly believe it. Mrs. Ambrose and Mrs. Mueller are comin together to make some food for the picnic. I can not think of two ladys who would surprise me more by bein a teem. Mebbe things is turnin around in this here town. Annie says she saw the two ladys jawin like two old frends. My Annie was surprised, too.

  That answered my thoughts about the Ambroses and the Muellers, and I was as surprised as the sheriff and Annie. Closing the book, I walked over to the cook stove and stirred the beans. I dipped the spoon in and lifted some out, knowing I needed to taste test them. In all honesty, I was just plain hungry. They say hunger is the best sauce, and the beans tasted like manna from heaven.

  “I think you’re going to like tonight’s dinner, Pete.” I turned to look at him and saw him stuffing the death certificates back into his pocket.

  “It smells good.”

  “Well, come on then. I’ll just fill Bubba’s bowl first, and then we’ll eat. I hope he’s got an appetite.”

  While I put paper plates on the table, Bubba slowly walked over to his bowl and sniffed the food. He took one bite and turned away, looking absolutely pitiful. The drool was still flowing.

  I opened a can of mixed fruit to go with the beans, since I didn’t have anything like cornbread. It would have to do.

  Pete spooned a substantial amount of beans onto his plate before leaving the table and coming back with the last two hotdog buns. “We’ll figure something else out for breakfast. These beans call for bread. Do we have any butter left?”

  We did, and I brought it back from the cabinet where I’d left it. Since it was actually margarine, I hadn’t worried too much about leaving it out.

  We began to eat, and Bubba walked over with his head down. He parked himself by Pete’s feet. Apparently his attention to the dog’s ailment had made quite an impression.

  “So, did you find anything interesting in the death certificates?” I asked.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “I found a certificate for each of the victims. Let’s talk about this later. I’d rather not think about it while we eat.”

  “You’re right, of course.” I picked up my plastic spoon and began to eat.

  Bubba watched us for a few minutes before finally walking over and taking a few bites of his dog food. That encouraged me, even though he didn’t eat all of it. He trudged, and that’s the only word that would fit his actions, over to the front door and settled in front of it. I shook my head and continued to eat.

  “There are three things I can think of that we need to do tomorrow,” I said.

  “And those things would be?”

  “First, we want to confront Cowboy Bob. Secondly, if the cowboy doesn’t shoot us on sight, I want to visit the cemetery. And, thirdly, we wanted to take a look inside the saloon.”

  He nodded. “There’s a fourth thing, too. Let’s try and get out of this place.”

  “You’re right. Let’s try to get out of here.”

  “Didn’t you say you wanted to check for photographs at the Melton house, too?”

&
nbsp; “I’m glad you remembered that. I’d really like to find a photo of the sheriff and his wife.”

  “Did you look for any in this house?” he asked.

  “Not really, but it seems like we’ve gone through everything. And no matter what they left here, I’d be willing to bet they wouldn’t leave photos behind.”

  Pete finished eating and he rubbed his belly. “Considering we’re almost out of food and you didn’t have much to work with, that was a pretty good meal. I won’t be going to bed hungry tonight. Thanks, sweetie.”

  I smiled at him and began clearing things off the table.

  “Sandi,” he called, looking out the window, “it’s not quite dark yet. Would you like to take a walk and check the Melton place tonight?”

  “I would. Where did they live?”

  “Over the store. There’s a door in the storeroom that leads to a set of stairs.”

  “Wow! I can’t believe I didn’t think about those stairs. Other than the saloon, it’s the only place in town with a second story.” I grabbed my sweatshirt and pulled it on, heading for the front door. Bubba stood up and stepped away from the door, but quickly dropped back to the floor.

  “Good boy,” I said. “You stay here and guard the house.”

  Bubba lifted his eyes in our direction, but not his head.

  Pete raised his eyebrow. “Yeah, like he was planning on going with us.”

  “I was afraid he might try.”

  There wasn’t much daylight left, so we hurried to the store. Pete headed straight for the storeroom without slowing down and led me to the stairs.

  “I did a little exploring when Bubba and I were stuck in here. You came back before I had a chance to climb upstairs.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Let me go up the stairs first. They might not be too safe after all these years.”

  “Be my guest, honey,” I said, gesturing ahead with my hand. “If I were you, I’d step on the wall side of the steps instead of the middle.”