Seasons of Death

by M. K. Wren

  Chapter 17

  It was a triple-shafted dolmen built not of stone but of massive, wooden beams studded with rusted bolts. Spanning the shafts beneath the horizontal beam was a thick camshaft, and affixed to one end of it, a wooden wheel at least six feet in diameter. Conan looked down on this enigmatic construction from a point slightly above it on the slopes of Potosi Peak, wondering what its function had been. All he knew was that it had been part of the Potosi mill that once occupied the site. It seemed ancient and mysterious, a relic of an undeciphered Stonehenge.

  Many of the photographs he had seen of Silver City were taken from Potosi Peak, and it was a good vantage point; the whole of the town lay below him like an archeological site in process of excavation and restoration. He had come here unconsciously, perhaps, in search of perspective, and certainly he had found that; at least, in a visual sense.

  But he was seeking perspective on a construction of a far more intangible nature, one whose components were events and human emotions.

  Adler’s innocence was one component. That had to be accepted as a basic component now. Yet Adler was bent on thwarting Conan’s investigation. The obvious motive for that was a desperate desire to protect someone, and if not himself, who else?

  Lettie Burbage? Not if Adler felt for her a fraction of the animosity she betrayed for him when she presented him to Conan as a prime suspect. She had never been high on Conan’s suspect list, but she was eliminated entirely now.

  Reub Sickle, with whom Adler had formed a partnership of sorts? According to Delia, Adler and Reub weren’t close friends. Would Adler join a conspiracy to protect Reub?

  Still, Reub couldn’t be eliminated from the suspect list. He had ample motive, and Amanda placed him at the scene of the crime. Not that Conan accepted her testimony at face value, but he accepted Reub’s presence at the scene because of the note. “The keys are in the car—take it and get out of here now.” That implied that the note was written at the mill office—where the car was, and where Lee was expecting Amanda, to whom it was addressed—and it could only have been written in the short time between Lee’s arrival at the office and his murder. Since Reub had the note in his possession, that meant he’d been in the office at about that time. Certainly he’d been there before Amanda departed, or she would have taken the note with her.

  Conan walked to the top of a snowy mound of tailings; there was a green cast to the rock, and myriad mica sparks flashed under his feet. He found himself a suitable boulder to sit on and lit a cigarette. The wind plucked the smoke away toward Silver.

  So, how would the scenario play if Reub were the killer?

  It was probably on one of his nocturnal sojourns into town—which the Roseberrys indicated had been frequent during the month preceding the murder—that Reub saw Lee drive from his house to the office, followed him there, and watched through the window while Lee looted the Lang-Star safe. Then, full of righteous outrage, Reub stormed into the office, he and Lee argued—violently, to explain the signs of struggle—and Reub stabbed Lee with Tom’s knife. Immediately afterward, Amanda appeared. Reub frightened her into making a hasty exit, then straightened up the office, and carried the body to the mine adit.

  Conan took a drag on his cigarette, grimacing irritably, but not at the taste of the tobacco. That scenario didn’t explain why Lee wrote the note, or what happened to the money. Of course, Amanda might have taken it, but Conan doubted that not only because he found her story about her hellish tour of Reno’s pawn shops convincing, but because it was highly unlikely that Reub, after commandeering the note, would let her escape with that briefcase full of green.

  If Amanda didn’t take the money, did Reub? If so, what did he do with it? It hadn’t been in his cabin, but that wasn’t conclusive. He might have buried it somewhere, or tossed it in another abandoned mine adit, or even, conceivably, have deposited it in his own rather impressive—according to Vern Roseberry—bank account. But why would Reub take the money? He didn’t seem to be at all interested in money per se, and he’d be well aware what a disaster the loss of that payroll would be to Tom Starbuck against whom he apparently had no grievance.

  That, however, wasn’t the factor that bothered Conan most in casting Reub as the killer. The murder weapon. Why would Reub use the knife when he undoubtedly entered the office with his ever-present rifle at ready?

  The revolver. Conan rose and walked to the edge of the tailings, looking down the rubbled slope to Long Gulch Creek, its course marked by thickets of willows and young cottonwoods. But what his eyes were seeing wasn’t registering in his brain.

  He was thinking about Lee’s gun; perhaps it entered the action here. If Lee had it with him that night, he probably wouldn’t have had a chance to make use of it—not against Reub’s rifle. But if Lee had previously given it to Amanda, if she arrived just after Reub—

  Conan sighed. In that case, Reub would probably have been the victim, not Lee, or at least there would have been a shoot-out in the office that would have attracted everyone within hearing distance, and in these mountains and at that time, that would have been a lot of people.

  And the note—it was still unexplained.

  So, try another scenario. This time cast Amanda in the role of killer.

  Amanda had said she was afraid the note might be interpreted as a brush-off, that Lee had a habit of discarding his women abruptly when he tired of them. Perhaps he did in fact mean to discard her, and perhaps he had a double motive in writing the note: to rid himself of Amanda and to send her off on a fool’s errand to Reno, then make her the scapegoat for the robbery, while he headed in another direction with the money.

  In what? Conan threw his cigarette down and crushed it under his heel. How did Lee plan to get out of town with the money if he sent Amanda off in his car? Well, possibly he planned to steal someone else’s car. If he were morally capable of robbing his partner, he probably wouldn’t balk at car theft.

  At any rate, assume Lee planned to rid himself of Amanda in this fashion. It would certainly be imperative to the success of his plan that he be absent when she read the note. And assume she didn’t arrive late for their assignation, as she claimed, but early, and found Lee in the office with the note. An argument ensued, which became violent, and Amanda, in self-defense, and with the proverbial fury of a woman scorned, stabbed Lee with the knife she found handy on the desk.

  At this point, Reub Sickle made his entrance, commandeered the note, sent Amanda off to Reno, then thoughtfully cleaned up the office for her and disposed of the body.

  “Damn.” Conan leaned down to pick up a blue-green pebble, examined it briefly, then tossed it down into the trees.

  If Amanda were guilty and Reub knew it, why would he let her go, much less encourage her to do so, much less cover her tracks for her?

  And Conan wasn’t entirely satisfied with the hypothesis that Lee had betrayed Amanda or even planned to. Amanda’s feelings for Lee were still intense after forty years. Would she feel so strongly if he had betrayed her? And would she return to Silver now if she had murdered him? More likely she’d be laughing up her sleeve, safe in California as Mrs. Mimi Bonnet, perfectly happy to let Tom Starbuck bear the burden of blame posthumously.

  Why had Amanda come back to Silver? A key question, but he doubted he’d have an answer to that until he had answered the larger question: who killed Lee?

  And did Amanda know the answer to that question? He reviewed their conversation in the cemetery, and he was convinced she did know, despite her protestations of ignorance.

  Conan returned to his boulder and lit another cigarette. The note. He kept coming back to that. One thing that bothered him about it was its cold tone. If Lee had written it in order to deceive Amanda, the intelligent approach would be to make it as warm as possible, to fill it with endearments, and certainly to address her by his pet name for her, Mimi. The very coldness of the wording as he wrote it would be enough to arouse her suspicions. And that, perhaps, was exactly Lee’s intent
ion.

  Conan’s eyes narrowed to obsidian slits. Perhaps it went a step further: not only to arouse her suspicions, but to serve as a warning. In that case, the capitalization of the word “hitch” was explained. It must have been a code word, and Lee capitalized it to draw Amanda’s attention to it. What would constitute a hitch in their plans? And why did Lee have to resort to a code word at all? Why not simply tell Amanda what the hitch was?

  Burdened cumulus clouds moved imperceptibly across the sky from behind him, their shadows marching across the broad shoulders of War Eagle, while he directed a new scenario on the stage of his mind.

  Lee wrote that note under duress, and the agent of the duress was the hitch in their plans. That’s how his gun entered the plot. Amanda said she hadn’t seen it in the office, and that was probably true, but it might have been hidden in the debris of the struggle. At any rate, it had been in the office somewhere for Reub to discover later and secrete with the note in his box, and it had been used to threaten Lee. The knife wouldn’t serve as an effective threat; not against a big man who didn’t shrink at violence. Only the gun would suffice, and it had been brought to the office by the killer. Lee had left it behind, forgotten, probably, in a drawer or closet.

  The killer had forced him at gunpoint to write the note, but Lee had taken matters into his own hands then and in the resulting struggle disarmed the killer and inflicted the bruises that the killer later ascribed to an argument occurring before Lee left his house. During that struggle, the killer at some point found the knife on the desk, and in desperation, in fear, and in jealous rage, stabbed Lee. It was probably more by accident than intent that the knife pierced his heart.

  And afterward? After Lee fell face down on the floor, driving the knife deep into his body, the killer undoubtedly fled the office. But with the money?

  The money hadn’t been left behind. Amanda, who was the first to enter the office after the murder, would have no qualms about taking the money if it were there, but she had Reub to contend with. And Reub didn’t take it. Conan was sure of that now. Reub’s behavior both at the time of the murder and in the last three days made sense now: he was protecting the killer.

  With that in mind, Reub’s best course at the time of the murder would have been to send Amanda on a one-way trip out of Silver in fear for her life, clean up the office and dispose of Lee’s body, and let people assume Amanda and Lee had run off together, all of which he did. But he would not take the money; a robbery would insure a police investigation, and Reub would avoid that if at all possible. If the money had still been in the office, he would have put it back in the safe. But he didn’t, which meant the money was already gone. The killer had taken it.

  Why? Had it been a deliberate decision? Would the killer be capable of that after suffering a beating at Lee’s hands, after the shock of stabbing him and seeing him fall to the floor to lie dead in his own blood? That had been the last thing the killer wanted.

  What did the killer want? Why had Lee been forced to write that note? The answer to that wasn’t difficult to fathom. The killer wanted Lee—without Amanda. The purpose of the note was to induce her to leave town, then the next step would be to induce Lee to stay and to see that he didn’t communicate with Amanda until she, thinking he had jilted her, gave him up in disgust. Lee couldn’t be kept at gunpoint indefinitely, but he could be blackmailed. The killer could threaten to tell Tom Starbuck that Lee stole the payroll, but to make the threat effective, the robbery had to take place, the killer had to take the money.

  But after the struggle, after Lee lay dead, the plan was in shambles, so why did the killer take the money then? To make Lee’s death seem the result of an encounter with a burglar? Possibly, but Conan suspected it was simply a reflex action carried out with no conscious thought at all. Later, the killer had no choice but to keep the money; to admit possession of it would be to admit murdering Lee.

  The problem with this scenario was that everything about it fitted perfectly with the known facts. Conan examined the perfection of it and felt physically ill. Even the conspiracy between Reub and Adler was explained: they were both trying to protect someone they cared about, and trying to protect Delia from learning the killer’s identity. Reub had probably witnessed the murder itself through the office window, and Adler, although he wasn’t on the scene, had still seen something, probably the killer following Lee to the office on foot.

  And why had Amanda Count come back to Silver?

  That was explained, too, but Conan couldn’t predict her intended course of action specifically. He was only sure that recovering the note from Reub was very incidental to her plans.

  The clouds had marched across the sky until only one streak of blue was visible behind War Eagle; the wind swept fitful whirls of white dust down the slope of the tailings. Conan rose and stood with his hands in fists at his sides, and he wanted to send curses echoing into the silent mountains. The misspent emotions, the years, the lives wasted, and the slow acid erosion of a life was as cruel as the sudden ending of it.

  No good is going to come of all this, Dexter Adler had predicted, and he was right. But the tide of events was beyond his control, and Conan’s presence was irrelevant to that. The key to the sequence of events already set in motion here was a factor that Adler probably wasn’t even aware of.

  Amanda Count had come back to Silver City.

  *

  Conan was in no hurry about returning to the Starbuck house, and even when he reached the crab apples he made an excuse for further delay by checking his car. It was garlanded with fallen blossoms. He turned and saw Delia standing on the porch. She waited until he joined her, and there was in her eyes a pensive longing as she looked out over the town. The scent of lilacs was sweet on the air.

  She said, “You must have brought the rain with you from Oregon.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to take it back with me when I go.”

  She turned, one eyebrow raised. “When will that be?”

  “Tomorrow. Delia, I’m afraid…” He stopped, staring at the neck of her dress; she’d had her apron on when he’d seen her previously today, and it had covered the brooch pinned on her bodice. A cameo, mounted in gold filigree, with a female head in profile. It was the mirror image of the one in Reub’s box. That one had faced left; this one faced right.

  “Conan? What’s wrong?”

  He recovered himself and mustered a smile. “Oh, I was just admiring that brooch. A family heirloom?”

  She looked down at it and smiled. “Yes, I guess you could call it that. It belonged to my grandmother, Oreana Becket. She was quite a character; typical pioneer woman, but a lady to her fingertips. I wear this thing so often, I’m surprised you haven’t seen it before.”

  “I’m sure I would’ve noticed it.” Then he added, “You seldom see cameo of that quality any more.”

  “No, I suppose not. There are two of these, actually; a matched pair. Grandma gave one to me and the other to Clare on our eighteenth birthdays.”

  He nodded. A perfect fit; everything such a damnably perfect fit. Delia went on absently, “I don’t know what Clare did with hers. Haven’t seen it for years. It’s probably hidden away in one of her jewel boxes; she’s such a pack rat. Now, what’s this about you leaving tomorrow?”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Delia, and it galls me to have to admit it, but I’ve come to a dead end on this case. It’s no use going on with it. It’s a cold scent; forty years cold.”

  She didn’t respond to that for some time, only studying him with a faint frown. Finally, she looked out toward Florida Mountain. “You’re right, of course, and it was foolish of me to think anybody could get to the bottom of this thing after so long a time. You gave it your best, I know, and I appreciate that.”

  Conan was surprised that she accepted his resignation with such equanimity. He didn’t expect argument or recrimination from her, but he did expect more questions.

  She seemed to sense that and turned to face him. “Conan,
it meant a lot to me to clear Tom’s name, but I care more about the living than the dead. I didn’t realize what a hornet’s nest I’d be stirring up when I asked you to come here. Now…well, it just doesn’t seem so important who killed Lee. That’s for the past. You know, that’s the trouble with living in this town; you can’t get loose from the past. It’s all around you here; even the very air you breathe is old.” Then her lucid eyes warmed with her smile. “Thanks for coming, Conan. Thanks for trying so hard.”

  He was at a loss for a suitable reply, and he hadn’t found it when the front door opened, and Clare came out on the porch. She was made up and perfumed with a more than usually liberal hand and dressed as if for a special occasion in a dress of ruffled lawn with a faded silk rose at her bosom, and she seemed a wistful Ophelia grown old.

  She greeted him with a pretty smile. “Good afternoon, Mr. Flagg.” Apparently, she had forgotten that on their last meeting she had tearfully wished for his departure. “It’s so nice of you to drop in on us again. I do hope you’ll stay for supper.”

  He said, “Thank you. Yes, I’ll be staying for supper.”

  “Oh, good. We’re having strawberry shortcake for dessert.” She opened the door, and as she fluttered back into the house added, “That’s Lee’s favorite dessert…”

  Chapter 18

  The tracery of the fretted arch flickered black against strobe-light flashes of lightning. Still testing, it seemed, hiding behind the clouds, light echoing from one turbulent mass to the next. The thunder was ten seconds in coming, a formless rumbling; the wind, laced with fine droplets of rain, howled an obbligato. Conan stood at the balcony railing, his cigarette sheltered in the curl of his palm, face tilted up to the sky.

  Within the house, a clock chimed midnight, but the sound was faint against the wind; the old house creaked and rattled with every wayward gust. Conan was still fully dressed, and he doubted he’d sleep well this night, if at all. Delia and Clare had retired three hours ago, but he had spent most of those hours here at what he was beginning to think of as his sentry post, or silently touring the house by flashlight, checking to see that all the doors and windows were locked. He didn’t know exactly what he was securing them against, what he was expecting, and that only made the waiting harder. Ultimately, he was looking forward to nothing but the dawn, but at the moment that seemed too far away to fix his hopes upon. He satisfied himself with a closer objective: he was waiting for the storm to break.