by Dana Marton
“Nobody. Then again, if he wore a light coat… He could have jumped in the ditch when he heard me coming. Hell, I barely saw Allie, and she was dressed as a grizzly bear.”
“Why didn’t the killer dig his car out in the first place?”
“He just killed a man. He’s in a panic. His brain is screaming, go-go-go get away before someone sees you.”
“You think you’ll figure out which one of the old geezers did it?”
“Hey!” Harper pulled an offended look. “Am I or am I not Harper Finnegan, Broslin’s top detective?”
Mike shrugged. “I guess we can ask Chase about that.”
“Watch me and learn.” Harper pulled on plastic gloves, then stepped closer, ran his hands along the bottom of the back bumper, found the little magnetic box he was looking for. “Backup keys.”
“How did you know?”
“My grandfather had them. My father has them. I think it’s mandatory for guys over a certain age. You don’t have one, they take away your AARP card.”
He unlocked the front door, had to drop to his knees in the mud to stick his head in.
“Empty Styrofoam coffee cups and a couple of napkins. Probably Lamm’s.” He backed out. “See if you can take some pictures, then we’ll take more once the tow truck pulls it right-side up.”
While Mike did just that, Harper went to check the trunk, but he couldn’t open it. Or rather, he could have opened it to maybe two inches, but risked that whatever was inside would fall out into the mud. He chose not to contaminate evidence and possibly obscure any precious fingerprints.
In fact…
“I’m going to start dusting for prints. Just what I can reach for now.” He climbed out of the ditch and pulled his cruiser in front of Mike’s so it wouldn’t be in the way when the tow truck came.
Once he had his kit, he dusted all around the trunk and each doorway. He didn’t bother with the inside. He’d do that once the Camry was at the station.
By the time he finished and stashed his supplies away again, Billy Picket was pulling up with his tow truck. “Heard you all need some help.”
Righting the Camry required all three of them, then some further maneuvering to pull it from the ditch. They were all covered in mud, huffing and puffing by the end, then laughing at each other.
Billy wiped his forehead, having worked up a sweat. “I think we all need to spend more time at the gym.”
Mike flashed a goofy grin. “Hey, do you know what demons do to get strong?”
Harper flashed him a long-suffering look, but Billy took the bait. “No. What?”
“They exorcise.” Mike laughed.
Billy laughed with him. “I gotta tell that one to my wife. You’re a born comedian, my friend.”
Mike shrugged. He hesitated, but then he said, “When my grandfather was dying from cancer, my grandmother and I used to go into the hospital every day. We’d tell him jokes until he laughed. My grandmother told me, when she was a little girl in her village in Ireland, there was a wisewoman who used to say laughter was medicine. Even if you were really sick, you wouldn’t die on a day you laughed. So we told stupid jokes.” He looked away. Rolled a shoulder. “Gramps lived for another year.”
Harper swallowed, feeling like an idiot. “I’m sorry, man.”
“It’s all right.” Mike shrugged. “My grandmother is gone now too. I don’t know why I keep…”
Billy Picket patted him on the shoulder, then turned to the cab of his tow truck.
“Hold on,” Harper told Billy before the guy could turn on the winch to lift the front of the car. Then he nodded to Mike, “Go ahead.”
Mike shot a few dozen more pictures, outside first, then inside, front seat and back. When he was finished with that, Harper popped the trunk.
Mike snapped pictures of the black gym bag in there before they switched places again.
“Let’s see what we have here.” Harper didn’t touch the tab on the zipper. Instead, he pushed his index finger in the miniscule gap in front of the zipper, and pushed the metal teeth open.
One inch, two, three, four. A little more, and then they could see inside.
Billy, who peeked from behind when he shouldn’t have, whistled. “Damn!”
Chapter Fifteen
“It’s our largest crowd ever,” Ginny Knapp whispered to Allie. The sprightly seventy-year-old, on her sixth husband—and she’d told Allie about all of them within a minute and a half of meeting her—peeked at the audience through the curtain she kept open a crack. “Full house. Sold out.”
Allie resisted asking whether Harper was there, but then a text from him popped onto her phone, and her question was answered.
Good luck tonight. Looking forward to the show. I’ll walk you back to the B and B when it’s over.
Her stomach fluttered. How weird was that? She wasn’t used to having emotional support, having someone in her corner. She was used to the aloneness, her way of life, although, she preferred to call it self-sufficiency. She hadn’t contemplated before how a friendly face might make a difference, that it would feel this…nice.
Well, don’t get used to it. She slipped the phone into her bag that sat on the corner of the voice equipment table next to her.
“Ready?” Ginny asked.
“I was born ready, ma’am,” Allie responded in an Old West cadence, slipping into character.
Ginny pushed through the curtain, then walked to the middle of the stage. She smiled as she drew a deep breath. “Welcome, all, to this highly anticipated event. On behalf of the Broslin Historical Society, it is my great pleasure to welcome Annie Oakley.”
She clapped, and so did the rest of the audience, although their enthusiasm was decidedly lackluster. Allie was Tony Bianchi’s daughter, after all. She had a feeling they weren’t entirely buying her try at an honest occupation. Especially since just days ago, she’d been arrested for murder. They were there to judge her for themselves.
Let them.
Allie took in the stage where she’d spent some of the best hours of her high school years. Same scuffed floor, same blue curtains, same brass lights—as close to feeling that she’d come home as she was going to get.
She allowed herself a second to feel, then she put the past away, shut all noise out of her mind, and strode forward with her saddle bags, her all-purpose antique rifle slung over her shoulder. Not the Parker Brothers 12-gauge shotgun Annie used in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show to impress Queen Victoria and others, but close enough as far as the audience would be able to tell from the distance.
A stack of wood occupied the middle of the stage, lit with a red light from below to look as if a fire burned. In the “fire,” on a fat stone, a tin coffeepot waited for her.
“Howdy, folks.” She looked at the audience, touching two fingers to her hat. “Mind if I share your fire? Night’s mighty cold.”
When a few brave voices invited her to join them, she dropped her saddlebags at her feet, shook out her bedroll, and sat.
“Coffee would be appreciated. I thank you for your kindness.” She pulled her tin cup from a saddlebag and poured. Sipped. “Can’t repay you with much beyond a tale or two. But I’d be glad to tell those, if you’d like to hear them.”
The audience responded. If Harper was among them, Allie didn’t see him. She couldn’t see past the spotlight pointed at the stage.
“Best start with who I am.” Annie settled in. “I was born Phoebe Ann Mosey, in a year so dry, the bushes followed the dogs around.” She paused while the audience laughed. “These days, most folks know me as Annie Oakley. You might have seen me in the papers wearing a fancy dress, but I wasn’t born no lady. I was born in a log cabin in Ohio, to Quakers, poor as dirt. Sixth of nine children. Well, fifth of seven that survived,” she amended.
“I didn’t go to school much, ’specially not after my father died.” She sipped some coffee and looked off into the distance. “I started trapping for the family at seven, hunting at eight. Them were hard time
s. And then they got harder. You know how it goes.”
The audience listened.
“By the time I was ten, I was bounded out to some people to do household work. Payment was supposed to be fifty cents each week and an education, but they paid me in beatings and starvation. Worked all day and all night. One time…” She shook her head. “I fell asleep in the corner of the kitchen, darning socks. They beat me within an inch of my life and shut me out in the snowstorm all night. Cold as I’ve ever felt. Wind near blew the skin off my face. My teeth chattered so hard, I thought I’d chip them. Got frozen through, fell so sick afterwards, I thought I’d die. I survived. I survived two years of the darkest hell I have ever seen, before I ran away.”
She could feel the energy build in the room, people falling into the story, beginning to be right there with her.
“I lived with some nicer folks for a spell, but then I went back to my mother. I hunted before, but I began hunting ten times harder. Now you might think it ain’t right for a girl to go hunting, but I paid off the mortgage on the family farm when I was fifteen with all the game I killed.” She stood up and demonstrated her stance, the way she held the hunting rifle. Then she lowered it. “I was the best hunter around them parts until Frank Butler came to Cincinnati. A shooting sensation, they called him.” She put some sass in her voice. “This I had to see.”
The audience roared.
“Well, wouldn’t you know, Mr. Shooting Sensation offered a hundred dollars to any of us local yokels who could outshoot him. You can bet I volunteered. And then I outshot the man!”
The audience cheered, and Allie took a bow.
Acting out parts, telling parts, Allie went on with her story about how Frank Butler courted Annie over the next year until she agreed to marry him. Then their adventures with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, where she—a woman!—was the highest-paid act next to Buffalo Bill.
The men and women packed into tight rows in front of the stage listened with rapt attention.
When, two hours later, she finished, they were on their feet, clapping with abandon, eyes lit with wonder. She’d won them over.
As always, Annie Oakley stayed for an hour-long question-and-answer session. For this, the spotlight was turned off and the overhead lights on, so she could finally see the full room and the people speaking to her.
Harper smiled at her from the back, wearing a black shirt and a Western tie with a silver clasp. Must have decided to get into the spirit of the performance. Allie appreciated when people went to the trouble.
She answered questions one after the other, quite a few about Buffalo Bill and almost as many about Sitting Bull, who had also been part of the Wild West show.
Then, once the questions ran out, she stood by the front door with Ginny Knapp, like a preacher after service, to shake hands. Annie’s story got nothing but smiles, so Allie considered the performance a success.
“I learned a lot.”
“Excellent show.”
“Did you know that Annie Oakley…”
Yes, she did. She pretended she didn’t. “Is that right?”
“It’s nice to have you back in town.”
Those were fewer, but they were there.
Harper waited in the back and reached her last. After he walked with her to collect her props and purse, they left the school together, Ginny locking the door behind them. Then Ginny hurried off toward the parking lot with a wave, and Allie was suddenly alone with Harper. The members of her audience were in their cars already with the heat cranked. The cold didn’t encourage lingering outside.
“That was something, you know that?” Harper’s eyes gleamed with a gratifying amount of sincere admiration. “You’re really good at this. I feel like I just time traveled.” He shoved his hands into his coat pocket. “How about I walk you back to Shannon’s?”
The bed-and-breakfast was only two blocks away. Allie didn’t really need an escort, but she said, “Sure.”
“Can I tell you something embarrassing?” Harper asked as they began to walk.
“You can. But I can’t guarantee I won’t use it against you later.” She was in a good enough mood for joking.
Harper stopped and leaned closer. “I always had the hots for the heroines of the Wild West. Annie Oakley. Calamity Jane.”
Allie laughed and nudged him with her shoulder. In Annie Oakley’s voice, she twanged, “It’s the buffalo coat, ain’t it?” It was the warmest coat she owned, and since it’d been returned to her from evidence, she’d decided to wear it. “Admit it, you just can’t resist a woman with the figure of a grizzly bear.”
“It’s the confident swagger,” he told her as they began walking again. “I find the Old West zest for life sexy. Whatever they wanted to do, both Annie and Jane, they just went and did it.” He paused and looked at her. “Kind of like you. You went off, left the past behind, built a life, made it work.”
“Are you saying I’m sexy?” She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think we can go from you’re under arrest to personal compliments this fast.”
“Point taken. I’ll pace myself.”
“I’ll get over the arrest faster if you tell me how the case is coming along.” She held up a hand to cut off the protest she knew was coming. “Just the parts you’re free to divulge.”
“Found more of what was stolen.”
“More gold?”
He didn’t respond.
“You found the silver?” She knew what had gone missing since she’d been questioned about it.
“Let’s just stick with more evidence,” he said after a second of thinking. “None of it points to you.”
“Good to hear. Have you narrowed down your field of suspects yet?”
“Soon. I think another round of interviews will be enough to solve the case. First interview is just asking information from anyone who might have some. But when I talk to a person for the second time, they get the idea pretty fast that they’re a suspect. The pressure is on. They’ll make a mistake. And when they do, I’ll be there to catch them in the lie.”
“I hope you do. I know I’ve been cleared, but I won’t be fully exonerated in people’s eyes until someone else is arrested. Which reminds me… Do you know where I could find your brother Kennan? I’m pretty sure I owe him money.”
“For?”
“Bail.”
“He got that back when the charges were dropped.”
“That’s what I thought, but it occurred to me this morning that he probably didn’t get it all back. There must have been a fee. I’d like to settle up with him. I don’t like owing people.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I want to pay him back.”
He watched her for a second, then nodded. “All right. Why don’t you come around to Finnegan’s tomorrow? He’ll be helping out behind the bar.”
She stepped around a puddle of melting snow. “Does he live with your parents?”
“Temporarily. He’s looking for a house to buy, but hasn’t found the right one yet.”
She was more hesitant with her next question. “And you?”
“Above the bar. Made the hayloft into an apartment a while back.”
Once part of a much bigger farm, Finnegan’s consisted of two buildings. The two-hundred-year-old farmhouse was Rose and Sean Finnegan’s home. The barn, they’d converted into Finnegan’s Bar and Grill, its stone walls lending the place the perfect, old-world atmosphere.
“You never left?”
Harper shook his head. “Is that bad?”
“If I had a big, loving family like yours, I never would have left either.”
They walked in silence for a while.
Then Harper said, “I really enjoyed your act tonight.”
“What did you like about it?” She always welcomed feedback.
“You lit up. You love doing what you do, and you’re good at it. You’re… I don’t know… Different. You changed.”
“I’d hope so.” She laughed. “I was s
eventeen the last time you saw me. Unsure of myself. Scared most of the time. Embarrassed a lot.”
“Because of your father. I’m sorry. I’m sure it didn’t help that I assisted him with his escapades.”
It didn’t. She wasn’t going to deny that. “I’m glad you chose a different path in life.” She grinned. “But probably not half as happy as your mother.”
He grinned back. “She says I gave her all her gray hairs.”
And it wasn’t as if his current occupation was all that safe either, Allie thought. “Have you ever been hurt in the line of duty?”
“Once or twice. But I’ve taken more punches from drunks at the bar, trying to break up fights. We cut them off if we realize someone’s gone too far, but with some people, it’s hard to tell. The ones who grow more boisterous the more boozed up they are are easy. Frankie Hadley just gets quieter and quieter until he blows. That’s the type we have to watch.”
Allie vaguely remembered Frankie Hadley. “I was in the same English class with Frankie, senior year, high school. He drank too much even back then.”
They were directly across the street from the bed-and-breakfast, so they crossed the street. On a Thursday night, close to midnight, in a small town like Broslin, traffic was light.
Smoke drifted from the B and B’s two chimneys.
“Remember those bonfires in your father’s backyard?” Harper asked. “I thought I was hot shit because he’d invite me over to have a few brewskies with him and his buddies.”
“He was using you.”
“I know that now.” He paused when she couldn’t hide her distaste. “What?”
“I was scared of his buddies. The way they were looking at me. Commenting on my cute shorts, that I was starting to fill out my T-shirts.” Anger popped into her voice. “One of them asked me if I was wearing a training bra yet. That was…fifth grade, maybe? They were creepy assholes. I always locked my door when they were there. My father saw what they were doing too. He joked about it.”
“Christ, Allie.”
“Then you began to hang with them. And I just stuck to you. You made me feel safe. When we started to go out later,” she told him, “it changed things. My father wanted your help with his various criminal activities. He considered you an asset. He figured you were invincible. Too young to get into serious trouble. And your family being who they are, you could do things and get away with it.”