And I was running errands for the sheriff’s office, as a sort of quasi-deputy with the promise of a deputy’s badge when I got “a couple of years older and a little less fat in the head.”
We were all about eighteen then. Les Willis and John Appel were both in love with Lucinda Howard. She seemed to prefer Les at first, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she was ever really in love with him.
But Les was starry-eyed about Lucinda. It was serious with Les all right, the kind of love that happens only once in a lifetime and then only to someone who is as fine and clean a fellow as Les was. Les was the best friend I ever had, and he was a prince of a chap. But he didn’t have any glamor. He didn’t have curly hair and he wasn’t a football player, and he worked pretty hard and didn’t have as much time off to take her places.
And besides, after the accident to his foot, he limped. And that meant he couldn’t dance, and Lucinda loved to dance. Appel took her out after that and had the field pretty much to himself. Lucinda fell in love with him.
Les’s foot—well, it could have been an accident. He was in the habit of taking a morning plunge in good weather, in a creek half a mile back of the Willis farmhouse. He always ran along the path, both ways, barefoot and in just his swimming trunks, and one morning he stepped into a trap along the path. Just a small trap, but barefoot as he was, it cost him two toes and laid him up for quite a while. It was during that time that John Appel made the most progress with Lucinda.
Lucinda fell for him hard. I know that she thought of herself as being engaged to him, although the engagement was never announced.
Then, suddenly, John Appel wasn’t around any more, and we learned that he’d taken the night train and bought a ticket for Chicago, and had taken all his clothes and things with him. All but Lucinda; he hadn’t even said good-by to her. And he hadn’t left a forwarding address, even with his folks. We didn’t know that till later, though.
It didn’t make much of a splash. Nobody thought much about it except maybe to wonder whether Lucinda was telling the truth. She said, with her head up and her chin firm, that she’d heard from him by mail and he’d been offered a job that was too good to turn down. Bud Sperry’s father was postmaster then and he didn’t remember that Lucinda Howard had got any letter from Chicago. And he’d have noticed.
A week later they fished Lucinda Howard’s body out of the river. Yes, she’d been going to have a child. She didn’t leave a note or anything blaming anybody. There still wasn’t any provable charge against Appel.
Les took it hard. Seemed to break him all up inside. He was just back from the hospital then; an infection had set in after his toes were amputated and almost healed. He’d been waiting a decent time for Lucinda to get over John and for him to be able to get around again, before he called on her. Yes, Les would have wanted to marry her anyway. He was that kind of a guy. And Lucinda had meant the whole world to him, and now there wasn’t any world left. If he hadn’t had a good strong religion, he might have followed Lucinda.
Nobody in town heard of John Appel for a long time after that. Twelve years, in fact. I was sheriff then; at thirty I was about the youngest sheriff in the state. Couple of plainclothes men were down from Chicago, checking up on a pennyweighter who’d been down our way and gypped old Angstrom, our jeweler, out of some rings.
I said to them, “Ever hear of a guy named Appel, John Appel? Local boy moved up your way. I was wondering if he made good in the big city.”
One of them whistled and shoved his hat back on his head. “Don’t tell me Appel came from this freckle on the map.”
“I’ve watched the circulars,” I told him. “Never saw his name or his mug. Tell me about him.”
“Runs a chunk of the north side of Chi. If it’s the same Appel. Short, stocky, about your age?”
I nodded.
The Chicago detective grinned. “They call him Little Apple Hard to Peel.”
“Harry Weston gave him that nickname,” I told him. “Nearly twenty years ago. He liked it, and I reckon he started it himself where he is now. Used to kind of brag about it.”
The Chicago man’s eyes narrowed. “Ain’t no charge from back here we could make stick, is there? My God, if there is—”
I shook my head slowly.
He sighed. “That was hoping for too much. Listen, there ain’t a charge on the blotter against him. Just if there’s somebody he don’t like or that double-crosses him, something happens to them, that’s all. Something not nice. They don’t even die clean, mostly, if you understand what I mean.”
“That’s the guy,” I assured him,.
“He’s too smart. Even makes out his income tax returns right. Or right enough so they can’t prove otherwise. He’s a legitimate business man. Runs a chain of laundries!” He snorted.
“Officially,” I said. “Outside of that?” His face wasn’t nice to look at. There are square cops even from Chicago. “When someone thinks of something dirtier than peddling dope to school kids,” he said, “John Appel will back them. But if there’s trouble they’ll take the rap, not him.”
“That his line?”
“I couldn’t prove it, but I’d say it was one of them.” The Chi men left town an hour or so later. I didn’t say anything about that conversation to Les because it would have opened an old wound.
One thing did occur to me though. Lucinda Howard might have been worse off than she was. Appel might have taken her with him.
Les Willis had, in a way, gathered up the pieces of his life. He’d been pretty no-count for a couple of years, and then he had the full responsibility of the farm put on his shoulders when his pa got sick, and he plunged in and worked like a horse and the work seemed to do him good. He got to looking all right again, and he acted and thought all right, too, except there was a sort of blank in one part of his mind, as though he’d built up a wall there to shut off one corner. His love for Lucinda Howard was still there, I guess, in that walled-off corner.
I think Mary Burton understood that part of him better than any of the rest of us. Mary was Nick Burton’s kid sister, and she’d loved Les in a quiet sort of way, all through school. He’d dated her a few times when Lucinda had turned him down, but he’d never taken her seriously. But after his parents died, I guess it was lonesomeness made Les turn to her again. As a friend, at first. But Mary was wise, and she understood him.
For a couple of years she was just a good pal to him. Then Les discovered that she was more than that, and they were married. He was twenty-five, then, and Lucinda had been dead six years. Mary was twenty-two.
After their honeymoon Les fixed up the old farmhouse until you wouldn’t have known it was the same place, and pretty soon he was painting one room light blue for a nursery. They had twins a year after they were married. A boy and a girl, Dottie and Bill. For Les and Mary the sun rose and set in those kids.
The years rolled along, and the twins were in school, then in high school. No one here thought of John Appel much, except when his parents died, almost at the same time, and our local lawyer sent a routine advertisement for him to the Chicago papers.
A lawyer from Chicago came down, then, with a power of attorney from John, and took over the farm. It wasn’t put up for sale, nor was it used. A check for taxes came each year, and the fields lay fallow and the yard was choked with weeds. Plow and harrow rusted in a rotting barn.
Occasionally a bit of news would reach us from Chicago. Appel was tangling in this racket or that Then there was a rumor that he was dipping into politics; another that he’d sold out all but his gambling interests and was concentrating on that and extending his territory.
Then, utterly without warning, John Appel returned. He dropped off the afternoon train, alone, as casually as though he were returning after a week-end trip. It had been twenty years.
He walked over to where I was standing talking to the station master and said, “Hello, Barney,” just as casually as that.
He still had the same curly bl
ond hair, and he looked scarcely any older than when I’d seen him last. He was heavier, but he hadn’t picked up a paunch. His skin was tanned, and he looked as fit as an athlete.
Then he noticed the badge I was wearing and grinned, “Glad to see you’ve made good,” he said. He was wearing a suit that had cost at least two hundred dollars, and there was a three-carat diamond ring on his left hand.
“Coming back to show off to the home folks?” I asked casually. “Or hiding out from someone?”
“You name it.”
“For long?” I asked. “And if you feel that way about it, consider the question official.”
But I’d noticed that the boys were unloading several trunks from the baggage car, and Appel was the only passenger who’d got off the train, so I didn’t need the answer to my question.
He took out a platinum cigarette case. I refused, but he lighted one himself. He blew a long exhalation of smoke through his nostrils before he answered, if one could call it an answer. He said, “Do you always welcome people so enthusiastically? Don’t tell me you’ve been hearing stories about me?”
“We don’t want you here,” I told him.
He grinned again, apparently genuinely amused this time.
“Don’t tell me that’s official, Barney. If it is, I’d be curious to know the charge.”
He turned away before I could reply. Which was just as well, because there wasn’t any answer. He was a property-holder, and there wasn’t a legal reason I could think of for taking official action. There wasn’t a proven charge against him here; probably none in Chicago or elsewhere. But I’d let him know where he stood with me, and I wasn’t sorry.
Then I heard footsteps coming around the wooden platform from the other side of the station, and for a moment my heart slowed. For those footsteps limped; they were made by Les Willis.
I thought for a moment he knew that Appel was here and that this was why he had come. Then I saw his clear eyes as he walked toward me and I realized he’d come to the station on some other errand.
I put my hand on his arm and said, “Take it easy, Les.”
He looked at me, puzzled, and then before I could explain he turned and flashed a glance up and down the platform as though he’d guessed. And he saw John Appel.
I was holding tightly to his arm and I felt him start to tremble. I didn’t look at his face; I thought it best not to, just then. That tremble wasn’t because of fear.
I spoke softly. “Take it easy, Les, I know how you feel, but there’s nothing we can do. Nothing. There’s not a scrap of evidence against him on any charge.”
He didn’t answer. I don’t know whether he heard me or not. I said, “Go home, Les. Keep away from him. He won’t stay long. Keep clear of him—for Dottie’s and Bill’s sake! He’s a killer now, Les!”
I guess it was the mention of the twins that brought him back. But he said, “He was a killer even when he was a kid, Barney.”
I knew what Les meant. To me, too, those things that had happened more than twenty years ago seemed worse to us than the real murders Appel had undoubtedly committed since. Possibly because we were closer to them. Those things had happened to people we knew and loved. They weren’t gangster stuff.
I heard Appel crossing toward where we stood. I could tell by Les’ face that he was coming too. I said, “Les, for God’s sake, go—”
He said, quietly, “I’m all right, Barney. Don’t worry.” His voice was so calm that I took my hand off his arm. Appel said smoothly, “If it isn’t Willis. You look older, Les. Golly, you look twenty years older’n Barney here. Been misbehaving?”
Les Willis showed better sense than I’d dared to hope he would show. He didn’t answer, but turned on his heel and started off.
Appel’s face got ugly at that. I think if Les had got mad and cussed him out, it would have amused him, but not speaking at all managed to get under his hide. He said, loud enough so Les would hear it, “Barney, there’s gratitude for you. I go off and leave him a clear field to get that little tramp he was in love with—what was her name? Lucinda something—and here he—”
Thinking it over afterwards, I guess Appel had never heard what had happened to Lucinda Howard. He was merely trying to bait Les into an argument. Otherwise he would have been prepared for what happened.
Les was a few steps beyond me, he whirled and was back past me almost in a single leap, so suddenly that I wasn’t able to stop him. His fist caught Appel flush on the mouth, and Appel went down—not knocked out, but sun-ply carried over backward by the momentum of the blow. He started to scramble to his feet. Les, his face filled with cold fury, stood over him, fists clenched. I got between them.
“Les,” I said sharply, and took him by the arm and shook him. “Get out of here. Remember Dottie and Bill—your kids. You can’t start trouble! For their sakes!”
I shook him harder. He didn’t answer, but he turned and walked off like a man in a daze. His footsteps limped across the platform toward the steps.
I whirled on Appel. And I had my hand on the butt of the gun in my pocket as I whirled. He’d just got to his feet. His face was a gargoyle mask. He took a step as though to push past me, but I stopped him. I said, “Cut it out. This isn’t Chicago.”
His face returned to normal so suddenly that I thought I had misread the expression that had been on it before. His fists unclenched. He said, “That’s right. This isn’t Chicago.”
I said, “You had that coming; you know it. The matter’s over, unless you want to bring an assault charge. If you do—”
He grinned. “Maybe I had it coming. Nope, I won’t bring any charge, sheriff. I won’t hurt your little boy, Les, if he stays away from me from now on.”
Yes, I was fool enough to believe him. I sighed with relief. I knew I could talk Les out of ever going near him again, and I thought I’d avoided trouble. Sure, I remembered the way Appel had held grudges before, but that was when he was younger. He’d grown up now, he was interested in bigger game and bigger money. Besides he’d admitted he was in the wrong.
I even relented enough to walk with him to the hotel, although I refused a drink. I heard him order the best room they had.
The next day a dozen workmen went out to the old Appel place. Carpenters, painters, decorators, gardeners. They worked three days putting the place in shape. His orders, I learned, had been to repair and restore—not to change anything. To make it as nearly as possible like the place it had been twenty years ago when he’d known it last. I’ve never understood that. A strange sentimental streak in a man who hadn’t come back for the funerals of his own parents.
But he insisted that same furniture be retained, placed just as it was, except that it should be refinished and re-painted.
No, I never understood that about John Appel, any more than I understood why he came back at all or for how long he had originally intended to stay.
I was fool enough to think that maybe it meant that he was tired of crime, that he was coming back to try to find himself. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Having no legal excuse for ordering him out of the county, I made a virtue of a necessity by telling myself that possibly it was for the best.
I saw him but a few times—and then only casually—before the end of the week when the work on the old Appel farm was done, and he moved his trunks out there from the hotel. He took no servants to live with him, and said he was going to do his own cooking, but he made arrangements with a woman to come in three tunes a week to do cleaning and laundering.
Meanwhile, of course, I’d talked to Les Willis. He’d listened to all I had to say, and had answered. “All right, Barney.” But I could see that he’d changed, almost over night. That wall across one section of his mind had broken down again. He was remembering. I don’t mean that he’d ever forgotten, actually, but he’d managed not to think about certain things. Now those memories were back with him.
It was two weeks and four days after Appel had stepped off the train that Les Willis’ house b
urned down.
The fire must have started about midnight. Les had driven Mary over to her mother’s to spend the evening. The twins were in high school then and they’d been left at home to study, as they had final exams the next day.
As it happened, the Burtons’ mare was foaling that evening. Les was a good hand with animals and knew quite a bit about vetting. He’d stayed to help, and that was why he and Mary didn’t leave until after twelve o’clock.
It was a bright moonlit night. As they drove their car out of the Burtons’ driveway they saw the red glow against the sky.
Right away they knew it was a fire somewhere near their place, and for a minute they were going back in to the Burton house to phone town for the fire apparatus. Then, through the still night, they heard its clanging bell and knew that someone else had phoned already.
Les put the accelerator to the floor and held it there. When they got home the fire department was already on the scene. And there wasn’t much left of the house.
It had been an old, weathered frame building that had gone up like tinder. The twins, Dottie and Bill, slept in bedrooms that had been partitioned off in the attic. Apparently smoke had smothered them in their sleep and they’d never awakened.
I got there rather late.
Chet Harrington, the fire chief, called me over. He said, “Barney, maybe this is a case for you. Looks like this fire was set.”
He pointed toward where a shapeless piece of candle-stub lay in a puddle of water alongside one corner of the house.
“My guess,” he said, “is that that could be the joker. Someone could’a splashed some gasoline on this side of the house—it went first—and stuck that piece of candle against the house and lit it. Look, what’s left of that candle is gutted along one side like it burned horizontally, and then dropped off. It rolled out from the house then when it hit, and—”
“Where’s Les?” I interrupted.
“Mary sorta collapsed. They took her into town. Guess Les went along.”
“Les see that candle? Did you tell him about it, Chet?”
Mostly Murder Page 14
