by Ed Gorman
“And what important meeting would that be?”
“That important meeting would be none of your damned business. Now tell me how long you think the body has been in the water.”
“I was just trying to give you a little background is all. And in a very friendly way, if I may say so.”
I’d hurt his feelings. I dropped my watch back into my pocket. “I appreciate that but I really am in a hurry.”
“Well, all you had to do was say so.” He pulled the sheet back from the corpse. “I’d say no longer than half a day to three-quarters of a day. And the reason I say that—”
“That’s good enough. Now I have one more question. The fisherman who brought him in, where did he say he found him?”
“Drifting close to shore.”
“I meant what area of the river did he find him in?”
“Up on the islet. Devon’s Islet, they call it.”
I put my hat on. “I appreciate it, Mr. Nevens.”
“I’ll be happy to walk you out—”
“I can find my way. Thanks. I appreciate your help.”
When I was halfway up the stairs, he said, “My dream is to sell my own caskets someday and not have to deal with Clancy at all.”
I shouted back down: “That’s a dream we all share, Mr. Nevens.”
Nan and Glen Turner’s hotel had a nice coffee den that offered a good view of the stairs. I’d inquired if she and her husband were in and the clerk had obligingly told me they were. I decided to have a few cups of coffee and sort through some thoughts while I waited to see if they would do me the favor of leaving the hotel any time soon.
Somewhere was something that everybody seemed to want. Molly, Uncle Bob, Nan all seemed to think I had it or knew where it was, whatever it happened to be. I had the sense that Dobbs, the dead man with the blue glass eye, was the originator of it and that Grieves wanted to be a part of it, the “it” being the thing that would go “boom boom boom” and make the possessor a lot of money. We were likely dealing with government secrets here. Even, perhaps, treason.
And then there was Swarthout and Ella Coltrane. They didn’t seem happy that I was looking into this at all. Maybe they already had whatever it was and were afraid I’d find that out.
And what did the sheriff know about it? A lot had happened in his town since Grieves and Dobbs had been there. A curious lawman would have to draw some kind of conclusions, wouldn’t he? But then maybe Terhurne was so obsessed with winning reelection that he hadn’t paid any attention to what was going on.
And then we were back to three murders. Uncle Bob, Molly, Dobbs. And Grieves missing and maybe murdered, too. Were they all related to whatever it was that a handful of people wanted so desperately?
About half an hour after I first put cup to lip, Nan and her husband appeared on the staircase, talking as they descended. Neither looked happy. Impossible to know if this was a battle over who had most recently violated a marriage vow or whether it had anything to do with the Grieves matter.
They didn’t stop at the desk. Nan got the expected number of glances from gentlemen, one of whom she anointed with a smile.
Five minutes later, I walked to the double doors of the hotel, looked both ways to make sure that neither of them was nearby, then went into the alley and entered the hotel from the back.
Room 19 was easy to find and easy to open thanks to the burglary tools I carried with me.
They had a large suite filled with pompous Victorian furnishings and enough geegaws and doodads, including a chandelier that could crush an elephant, to make the most pretentious New Orleans madam envious.
They had two trunks and three suitcases. I’d had serious experience riffling rooms and knew how to be both quick and careful. They had expensive clothes, at least half of which were scanty bedroom attire for Nan, and fancy ruffled shirts for hubby.
I was figuring on a sketchy search of the bedroom bureau that stood across from the massive canopy bed. There was enough perfume on the air to tear my eyes up.
You don’t expect hotel guests to have brought enough material to pack drawers but these folks had. Twice I had to stop when I heard distant voices in the hall. The suite was so sizable and so filled with furnishings and thick rugs and thick wallpaper that most sounds from outside were cut off. It was like being inside a vault.
A lot of jewelry, though I suspected this was glass. The real stuff, if there was any, would be downstairs in the hotel safe.
What I wasn’t looking for but was happy to find was a small box disguised as something fancy and fake-gold for milady.
Except for diplomats and assassins, I’d never known anybody who’d packed eight different passports before. Sixteen altogether for the Mr. and Mrs. There were the expected ones of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and Italy but also South Africa and two Caribbean countries.
And then it came together. I still didn’t know what “it” was but I could see where the players fit. Nan and Glen dealt with scientists who could be blackmailed or bought off. Scientists would give them samples and plans for a highly secret weapon they were working on. And Nan and Glen would give them money. Or promise to destroy the blackmail material. D.C. probably had a thick file on them. Maybe a couple of thick files. They were the ultimate opportunists. And all across the world. You never knew what little country was going to come up with the rudiments of a super weapon. And there would be a long line of folks to obtain them, with an eye to selling the “it” to a larger country for many, many times more than they’d paid for “it.”
I took the passports, shoved them in my back pocket, and finished going through the rest of the drawers. Nothing useful turned up.
I was just about to leave the bedroom when I heard the door open in the living room and Nan say, “I still don’t like the way Sheriff Terhurne kept looking at us. Like he knows something about us.”
“He’s just some hayseed. He doesn’t know anything.” Then he laughed. “You were at your worst in that haberdasher’s, by the way. You’re always bitching about how I embarrass you. How about how you embarrass me?”
“Why didn’t you take her out in the alley and attack her? I’m pretty sure she would’ve liked it, the way you two were making eyes at each other.”
“For God’s sake, Nan, all she was doing was selling me a couple of shirts. She’s probably got three kids at home and sings in the church choir every Sunday.”
“Isn’t that what you prefer? Remember when we first met and you said you liked the ‘unlikely’ ones best?”
“That was twelve years ago. Now let me throw these shirts on the table here and we’ll go down and have a couple of drinks.”
“Maybe the shop woman’ll be down there waiting for you.”
They were making a pretty good argument against marriage. At least for people like them.
“Maybe I’ll just stay up here.”
“Oh, don’t go in for one of your sulks. If anybody should be sulking it’s me. I still think you hooked up with that federal man the other night.”
“At least he bathes.”
“I don’t know why you keep bringing up that girl in Cheyenne. I’ve apologized every chance I’ve had. And she did bathe. You were just making that up to hurt me.”
“The hell I was. You stank like a cesspool when you slipped into bed that night.” Then: “Now hurry up and let’s go downstairs. Now that you brought up that stinky bitch in Cheyenne, I need a drink.”
“I wish you hadn’t brought up that sheriff. Now you’ve got me worrying about him, too. Maybe he’s not as dumb as he looks.”
“Nobody could be.”
I’d been ready to move but now I didn’t have to. The front door closed. I heard them walk away but the hall carpeting soon absorbed their footsteps.
I took one more turn around the bedroom, making sure I hadn’t missed another suitcase.
The extra turn was worth the time it took. I found a calendar with the next day’s date circled. I also found a file wit
h three articles about Dr. Nathan Dobbs. The articles were dated two years earlier. They referenced his expertise with hand-carried weapons for foot soldiers. There was even a photograph that displayed his glass eye perfectly. And there was a postcard from Dobbs, simply stating that he would be in Junction City on a certain date, which was three weeks earlier.
Had they met up?
Chapter 18
Knut stopped me halfway to the livery. “There’s gonna be a town council meeting tonight about the sheriff. This is something that just sorta happened on its own. There’s enough steam in this town right now that it’s going to take place even if Swarthout or anybody tries to block it. They say it’s gonna be a kind of referendum on how Sheriff Terhurne runs this office.”
“One of his opponents probably drummed this up.”
“Absolutely.” He paused. “He asked me if I’d ask you to do him a favor.”
“Aw, shit.”
“You wouldn’t have to say much, Noah. Just that things sorta happen sometimes and that Terhurne has fired Hayden for dereliction of duty and that as far as you can tell, Terhurne is a pretty good sheriff.”
“I get paid for this?”
He didn’t smile. He looked, in fact, sort of amazed.
“I was kidding, Knut.”
The smile came wide then.
“You got to remember I’m not used to big-city humor. And you seem like such an honest person, I was really surprised.”
“Well, I guess I can do that but I don’t see that it’ll matter much. Federal men aren’t all that popular. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, he’d appreciate you givin’ it a try. Six-thirty in the little building next to the post office. Thanks, Noah.”
Twenty minutes later I was on my horse. I rode out to where Dobbs’s body had been found.
I was grateful to be back outdoors and alone. The snow on the mountain peaks, the green of the pines on the low hills, the smell of river and grass soothed me.
The islet turned out to be nothing more than a spit of sand with a few tangles of weeds to give it a more solid look than it deserved. It must have been underwater at least three or four times a year. This was where Dobbs’s body had washed up.
I spent half an hour working that spit. Aside from a few pieces of branches, a couple of rusty tin cans, an ancient shoe that various animals had taken turns gnawing on, there wasn’t much to see.
A couple of times I knelt next to the water and dragged my hands through it to see if I could find anything that the lawmen might have overlooked. All I got was some oily residue. There must have been a factory on the river somewhere nearby, I thought. This was a political battle in many territories. Industry was all well and good but there were problems with it that nobody had foreseen.
I went back to my horse and took my field glasses from my saddlebag.
Far in the distance I could see the unused railroad tracks shining. These would lead to the resort. I was tempted to follow them but it was late in the day by then.
I mounted up and started back, disappointed that nothing had turned up where the fisherman had found the body.
On the way back to town I glimpsed the mansion that Swarthout had let Grieves use. I eased on over there.
It was antebellum by way of Colonial. Sitting on an unending sea of green grass, properly kept to the blade, it had the sort of storybook appeal that Molly Kincaid would have loved. Inside you’d expect to find Cinderella or at least a princess or two.
The sun had started to turn bloody and the blood shone on the numerous windows of the place. The bird feeders were busy with at least a dozen kinds of birds. The gazebo was big enough for a hoedown.
I dismounted and just stood there, taking in the sounds and scents of the dying day.
I walked the grounds. The plot was extensive, leading to two massive garages in the rear. The property at the back was defined by an endless line of forest.
I walked around inside the barn and stables. No animals and the turds I found were hard and dry.
A crow sat on a wagon watching me. There was something spectral about him, like a portent of monstrous deeds. Very different feel to the back of the place—one of desertion, I guess, as if something terrible had passed through there and would soon pass through again—and so I headed back to the front.
I went up the front steps, used my reliable burglary tools, and opened the massive double doors with their intricate carvings and enormous brass fittings. Gargoyles peered at me from both doors.
Inside, my steps began to echo. The dying day darkened the huge vestibule in which I stood. Empty and dark, it had the feeling of a cathedral that God had fled. Or maybe my definition of God was wrong. Maybe the people who’d come here had a different kind of God than mine. They worshipped money. I remembered once seeing a man in expensive shoes slapping the head of the shoeshine boy who was working on his shoes. The boy was doing a fine job but not fine enough for the man in the top hat and enormous cigar. I needed my own boots shined and was waiting my turn. But the harder the man slapped the boy on the head, the less I could control myself, until finally I lunged at the man, grabbed the hand he was slapping with, and hurled him down to the floor. I made him tip the boy ten times what he normally would and then I chased his ass out the door. I imagined that this mansion had been filled with men like him.
I walked deeper inside. I stood beneath a chandelier wide enough to cover the ceilings of most of the rooms I stayed in. From here I saw the outline of the grand staircase that twisted and turned upward into a darkness that brought back the image of the crow and the secrets in his fierce dark unknowable eyes.
I stood still for long moments, listening. Wind in trees; spring limbs scraping windows; one of the outbuilding doors banging in the wind; creaks and ghostly groans of the house.
I found a candle and lighted it and then walked around the ground floor. A grand piano dominated the living room. The couches and divans were in the current English style, spare and uncomfortable looking. The den was packed with books, maps, an enormous globe, and an open space that might be used for a string quartet. You could roast a couple of cows in the fireplace. A fancy French restaurateur would have envied the enormous stoves, ovens, cabinetry, chopping blocks, and jungle of pots and pans hanging from a device suspended from the ceiling. Two long windows looked out upon a section of lawn where croquet pieces stood in place, awaiting players. Easy to imagine smartly dressed men and women on a mild June Sunday playing the game and laughing oh so civilly when one of them missed a shot.
The upstairs was as lavish as the downstairs. Four bedrooms, two of them suites, each furnished in taste more French than British and a hell of a lot more comfortable looking.
I was back to looking through drawers again. Nothing. Nor in the closets. Grieves might have stayed there for some time but he certainly didn’t leave anything behind.
I started to leave the largest of the bedrooms when my eyes went to a wastebasket by a small desk. I didn’t find anything in that one but I decided to check back through all the wastebaskets in the house.
And in the den downstairs, shoved under the opening in the massive desk, I found the wastebasket that yielded a partially written letter.
Star Commercial Lines
14387 Addison Street
San Francisco, California
Dear Sir,
I shall require a first class compartment on a ship leaving for Argentina on June 28
Here the ink smudged and that was when he’d balled up the paper and fired it into the wastebasket.
I’d never seen an example of Grieves’s writing before but I was assuming this was his letter.
I had two thoughts almost simultaneously. One, that he was asking for one ticket. Two, that his partner Dobbs had been hauled from the river with a pair of bullets in his head.
Traveling light. Whatever “it” was, and it likely had to be one of the hand-carried weapons referred to in the articles I’d seen, Grieves had decided to keep t
he money for himself when Nan and Glen bought the material from him.
I smoothed out the letter, folded it small, and then headed back to town.
Chapter 19
It wasn’t as much a town meeting as a prelude to a lynching.
There was a desk in front and maybe twenty chairs for the fifty or so people who had crowded in the small, narrow room that had been sloppily painted lime green and hung with photographs of territorial bigwigs, one of whom looked familiar to me. I sat in one of the two chairs facing the crowd. Sheriff Terhurne sat in the other.
“You been at this job too long.”
“It’s an embarrassment, havin’ a prisoner killed like that.”
“If you were the right kind, you’d hand in your badge, somethin’ like this happening.”
Easy to see that these were the minions of one Sy Compkins Rafferty, the tall, woodsman-like man who stood in the back of the room with his arms folded and a smirk on his carefully mustached face. He was enjoying seeing the opposition wince and stammer and flounder every time he was asked a question.
Much as I didn’t want to, I felt sorry for Terhurne. Nobody in the law enforcement business is without flaw. For all his arrogance, he seemed a reasonably competent sheriff to me.
On a soft spring night like that one, people should have been out for a stroll, not packed into that mean little room watching a man like Terhurne humiliated.
Rafferty, I assumed, was hoping that Terhurne would be forced to resign on the spot. Or to say something so arrogant or stupid that Rafferty would win the election.
He’d prepared them well. A full hour went by. Terhurne looked more and more beleaguered until he finally said, somewhat pathetically, “I saved your dog from drowning, Mrs. Whitman, don’t that mean anything?”
“Saved a dog from drowning!” somebody laughed. “He’s a regular good Samaritan.”
An elderly man stood up and said, “I think we owe you an apology for this evening, Sheriff. Rafferty back there put a lot of people up to makin’ fun of you tonight. But I just come because I think maybe it’s time we had ourselves a new sheriff, that’s all. I think you done a real good job, Sheriff Terhurne, but with this young gal getting killed right in the jail and your nephew—Well, four, five years ago you wouldn’t have hired your nephew. You woulda been smarter than that. It’s a matter of judgment. Any time a man hires a relative in a public position like you got—well, that’s just askin’ for trouble.” His arthritic hands came together almost in prayer. “So what I’m proposing here—and I don’t give a hang if Rafferty likes it or not—is that the town council gives you a bonus of $500 and then gives a monthly stipend for your retirement. This town owes you a lot—” He turned then and cast a scolding eye on his fellow townsmen. Even Rafferty looked embarrassed by the trick he’d tried to pull there at that gathering. “And I plan to bring it up tomorrow at the official town council meeting.”
