The Huckleberry Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery

by Patrick F. McManus

  Daisy Quinn, Bo’s secretary and also a deputy, extremely compact and pretty, with close-cut curly black hair and brown eyes, was a woman who fairly exuded efficiency. Tully had recently made the mistake of having a brief fling with Daisy, a mistake that conceivably could have gotten both him and Daisy fired. Nevertheless, she had helped him over what Tully thought of as a rough patch and he now appreciated Daisy more than ever, even though he tried to make a point of not showing it. During his absences, he let his undersheriff, Herb, think he ran the department, but Daisy actually was the one in charge. All his deputies knew to take their orders from the secretary. Daisy brooked no nonsense from them.

  Tully stuck his head into the radio room and said hi to Flo, his radio person. She gave him her usual big smile. Florence “Flo” Getts was his go-to person whenever Daisy wasn’t available. Undersheriff Herb Eliot was so far down on the list, Tully often forgot about him, even if the department was extremely busy. He had long ago figured out that in any business, institution, or other kind of organization, there was always at least one totally useless person. Usually it was a person high up the organizational chart, if not at the top. He sometimes wondered if headhunters didn’t advertise for totally useless people. This was the position for which Herb was totally qualified.

  “Hey, Lurch!” Tully yelled across the briefing room.

  Lurch looked up from his computer and gave him a big grin. “Hey, Bo!”

  “I’ve got some work for you.” He walked over to the Unit and handed him the piece of paper Crockett had given him. “See if you can find some prints on this—other than mine, that is. If you find any, run them through IAFIS and see if you can find a match.”

  “IAFIS” stood for “Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.”

  “You got it, Bo. Shouldn’t take long.”

  Tully walked over to his glassed-in office. “Daisy, bring your pad. I’ve got some work for you, too.”

  She got up from her desk and bustled in. “How did I ever guess?”

  “Beats me. You must be psychic. Which reminds me, you know anything about this Etta Gorsich?”

  “The fortune-teller? I’ve never met Gorsich but there are people in town who swear by her. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about how she’s contacted dead relatives and come up with messages from them, that sort of thing. Weird stuff. You wouldn’t get me within a thousand yards of that house of hers.”

  “Really? I was thinking of sending you over there for a reading, or whatever they call it.”

  “No way!”

  Tully leaned back in his chair. “What does she look like, Daisy? Skip the part about a pointed black hat and a broom.”

  “I’ve never seen her. I don’t think she leaves that creepy house of hers very often. She doesn’t make house calls, as far as I know. You have to go to her if you want whatever she has to sell. I can feel the hair rising on the back of my neck just talking about her.”

  Tully smiled. He couldn’t believe a person as sensible as Daisy could be affected by such nonsense. “Well, if you refuse to check her out, I guess maybe I’ll drift over there after work. I had no idea you’re such a chicken, Daisy.”

  She laughed. “I’ll be waiting for your report first thing in the morning, Sheriff.”

  3

  ETTA GORSICH’S HOUSE sat by itself atop a steep but low hill. It was surrounded by overgrown trees, brush, dried grass, weeds, and dead wildflowers, mostly daisies, dandelions, and thistles. Apparently, the fortune-teller wasn’t big on landscaping. He climbed the steep, rickety wooden stairs leading to the front porch. Tully ignored the two handrails on principle. He thought they were mostly for sissies. The front porch looked as if it had recently been worked on, here and there a new board showing fresh and clean. Tully, already nervous and regretting his decision to check out Mrs. Gorsich, started to knock on the door. It popped open before his knuckles made the first rap.

  An attractive middle-aged woman stood there smiling at him. She was in fact one of the better-looking women Tully had seen in a long while. He instantly regretted jumping back and gasping “Whoa!” at the suddenness of the door springing open. She wore a cream-colored tailored suit on her slim, shapely figure and a necklace of pearls around her elegant neck. Her smile was large and gleamed with both amusement and sparkling white teeth. “Hello,” she said in a husky voice.

  “Uh, hello,” Tully managed. “I’m Blight County sheriff Bo Tully and—”

  “I know who you are, Sheriff. Everyone in Blight County knows Sheriff Bo Tully. Please come in. I hope you’re not here to investigate the ridiculous rumors that I’m some kind of fortune-teller.”

  “Uh,” Tully said.

  “Please have a seat over on the sofa, Sheriff. I was just making a pot of tea. Would you like some?”

  “Uh,” Tully said again.

  “A cup of tea?” the woman said. “Would you like one?”

  “Why, thank you,” Tully blurted as if coming out of a coma. “A cup of tea sounds great.”

  Mrs. Gorsich disappeared into what Tully assumed was the kitchen. He walked over to the sofa and sat down. The room appeared to be expensively and tastefully decorated. If the lady made her money from fortune-telling, she apparently did very well at it. Tully tapped his finger nervously on his knee and waited for her to return.

  Mrs. Gorsich presently came out of the kitchen with a tray containing a silver teapot, two china cups on saucers, two silver teaspoons, a small pitcher of cream, and a crystal bowl of raw sugar, a tiny spoon sticking out of it. She placed the tray on the coffee table and sat down in a chair across from him. She had excellent posture, her back perfectly straight. He would have to tell his mother about Mrs. Gorsich’s posture. Rose had a thing about posture.

  “So, Sheriff, did you bring your handcuffs?”

  “Uh, no. No, I didn’t bring any handcuffs.”

  “Too bad. It might have been interesting.”

  Tully stared at her, his mind now a complete blank.

  Mrs. Gorsich laughed. “Only joshing you, Sheriff. I’m sorry. Please tell me why you’re here.” She poured the tea.

  Tully put two tiny spoonfuls of raw sugar in his tea, stirred in some cream, and took a long sip, all the time trying to think of why he was there.

  “Basically,” he finally said, “I guess I’m here because I try to know all the residents of Blight County, particularly those about whom I hear rumors.”

  “ ‘Whom’!” Mrs. Gorsich exclaimed. “Sheriff, you are the first person in Blight County I’ve heard use the word ‘whom’—at least, to do so correctly. You obviously are an educated person.”

  “I had a very mean English professor in college, Dr. Agatha Wrenn. We were terrified of her. Learning proper grammar seemed the safest thing to do. If you said ‘snuck’ for ‘sneaked,’ you were taken out behind the language arts building and shot.”

  “Maybe that’s why you went into law enforcement after college.”

  “It was pretty much expected of me. Men in my family have been Blight County sheriffs for the last hundred years. But I’m here to find out about you, Mrs. Gorsich.”

  She refilled his cup. “Etta, please. You mean about my being a fortune-teller?” She laughed. “I admit that many Blight City businessmen come to me for advice about decisions they have to make. They are simple folk for the most part, and I’m sure they think of me as a fortune-teller, particularly when my advice works out for them. I’m actually a financial consultant. I have an MBA from an Ivy League university, the name of which would be too pretentious of me to mention. I worked on the Street for a dozen years and was quite successful at it.”

  Tully couldn’t believe she had just confessed to having been a prostitute.

  She apparently read the puzzlement on his face. “Wall Street,” she said.

  “Oh, right.”

  “So, you’re wondering why I ended up here. Well, I didn’t end up here. I may move on at any time, but I’ve become very fond of Idaho. It’s a
beautiful state, and the people are nice, and I just have a sense of peace here. Anytime I get bored I fly off to San Francisco or New York, but it’s not long before I come zipping back to Idaho. I have quite a list of clients here I help with investments.”

  “I could never leave Idaho,” Tully said. “So I’m not surprised you like it.”

  He set his empty teacup back on the tray. He couldn’t remember having drunk any of the tea. Etta Gorsich picked up the teapot and refilled his cup. There was something about the woman that soaked up his total attention.

  “I understand, Sheriff, that you are a very successful artist.”

  Tully laughed. “That all depends upon what you mean by ‘very.’ I’ve been painting most of my life and tend to view the world more as a painter than as a sheriff. Only in very recent years have my paintings started to sell. My hope is one day to give up sheriffing and become a poor but otherwise modestly successful full-time artist.”

  He set his cup back on the tray and pushed himself up from the couch. “I’d better not take up any more of your time, Mrs. Gorsich. Thank you very much for the tea.”

  “Please, call me Etta,” she said, smiling, pouring him another cup of tea. “And is it all right if I call you Bo?”

  “Sure,” he said, settling back on the couch. “Everybody does, even my criminals.”

  “I hope you don’t think of me as one of your criminals.”

  “Not at all.” He sipped his tea.

  • • •

  Etta said, “I’ve traveled all over the world, Bo, and met hundreds of interesting people, but I have to say, you are the most interesting man I’ve come across in a long while.”

  Tully didn’t know what to say. Finally, he managed to get out a modest “Well, uh, thank you. No one has ever said that to me before. I suppose maybe they didn’t notice.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they noticed.”

  After a bit more conversation, he picked up his teacup, only to notice she had refilled it again. He set the cup back on the tray and stood up. “I really shouldn’t take up any more of your time.”

  Etta stood and walked him to the door. “Please come again, Bo.”

  “You can count on that, Etta.”

  He turned to thank her again for her time. She came up close and put her hand on his chest. Tully thought she had stopped his heart.

  “Next time, Bo,” she said, “don’t forget the handcuffs.”

  Tully fumbled with the doorknob, finally got it to turn in the right direction. He went out onto the porch and started down the steps. He knew Rose would be disappointed that he hadn’t asked Mrs. Gorsich about Orville’s body.

  “Oh, Sheriff!” Etta called after him.

  Tully stopped and turned.

  “Look under the house!”

  Tully gave her a brief smile and continued on down the steps. It was only at the bottom he realized he had been using both handrails.

  For the first time in his life, he had met a woman he didn’t think he could manage. She was like some kind of space alien, dropped into Blight City to spy on the populace. She would no doubt report back to her managers, some form of reptiles who would at some point descend on Blight and eat all the residents. To investigate her more thoroughly, he should invite Etta to lunch. He might even throw some really tough grammar at her. His tough grammar bounced undetected off local women, but Etta would be different.

  He went back to the courthouse and down to the jail in the basement to check on his usual suspects. Sometimes the criminals got a little rowdy and had to be settled down. A riot or anything seriously dangerous he left to his jail matron, Lulu Cobb. Lulu’s reputation was such that she had to do nothing more than open the cell-block door and yell, “All right, you idiots, knock it off—you don’t want me down there with my stick!”

  Tully had never seen her down there with her stick, and it was a sight he seriously wished to avoid. Tully himself took a much softer line toward the inmates. Most of them were young and stupid, and he thought maybe Lulu reminded them of their mothers.

  He found her at her desk outside the cell-block door. A partially played hand of solitaire was spread out on the wood top of the battered desk. “How are our critters, Lulu?”

  She shoved herself up. “Oh, they get a little restless along about feeding time, but they been quiet enough. You want to go in and visit with them, Bo?”

  “I guess not, Lulu. My stomach is a little queasy today. Maybe tomorrow. Be careful.”

  “I’m always careful, Bo, always careful.”

  He tromped up the two sets of stairs and down the hall toward his office. The daytime shift had already left the briefing room, Herb and Daisy among them, but Lurch was still hard at work in his corner. Tully sometimes thought maybe Lurch had no other life, but then it would occur to him that the Unit had the beautiful Sarah. And Sarah was a major something.

  “Hey, Lurch!” he yelled.

  “Hey, Bo!”

  “You get any prints off that paper?”

  “Yeah, I got a match, too.”

  “So don’t keep me in suspense.”

  Lurch thumbed through a notepad next to his computer.

  “To begin with, his name isn’t Ray Crockett.”

  “Big surprise.”

  “His name is Ray Porter. He did two years for possession with intent to sell. Got out in 2002. Since then he’s been clean, at least as far as law enforcement knows.”

  “Right. As far as we know.”

  Lurch smiled. “I hear you checked on Mrs. Gorsich. How did that go?”

  “Daisy has a big mouth. Yes, I went up and met Etta Gorsich. She’s a very nice lady—attractive, too. And sophisticated. Not at all what I expected. Her so-called fortune-telling is nothing more than business advice. She’s an investment consultant, not a fortune-teller.”

  “How good-looking is she?”

  “I’m inviting her to lunch.”

  “That good, huh?”

  “Almost up to Sarah’s level, but a few years older.”

  Lurch feigned amazement. “Wow, that’s dynamite, boss. I was wondering what it might be like to date a fortune-teller. She would always know what you’re thinking.”

  “Women always know what we’re thinking, Lurch. But one last time, she’s not a fortune-teller.”

  “Right, boss.” The Unit gave him one of his snaggletoothed grins and went back to his computer.

  Tully stepped into his office to look at some papers Daisy had left for him. He flopped into his chair and began aimlessly tapping his fingers on the desk. Suddenly he stopped. Look under the house! What on earth had she meant by that? The hair stirred on the back of his neck.

  4

  TULLY TOOK THE next day off. It was getting late in the season for huckleberries but he wanted to get some digital photos of them for his files and maybe a gallon or so for huckleberry pie and pancakes. He had picked and eaten huckleberries all his life. Lately it had occurred to him that he actually didn’t like huckleberries all that much. What motivated him to pick them every year? Maybe it was because they were free and all you had to do was go out in the woods and pick them.

  He had been working on a painting of a chipmunk perched on a weathered log and had decided some huckleberries in the foreground would lend a nice touch. He had picked and eaten many thousands of huckleberries, but when it came to painting rather than eating, he couldn’t seem to get them right. Besides, he felt like a long drive in the mountains. This late in the season, he knew if he were to find berries, it would have to be in the high country. With the economy scraping bottom, there were so many commercial pickers they cleaned out just about every berry, so there was hardly anything left for the ordinary picker. He hoped they hadn’t found his secret patch, up on the back of Scotchman Peak. He didn’t need many huckleberries for his photograph, but it would be nice if he could take Rose back enough for a couple of pies.

  Having donned his lucky picking clothes, still stained with blotches of faded purple from many seasons
and many washings, he added a khaki vest to conceal his Colt Commander. There had been a time when it never would have occurred to him to take a gun with him to pick huckleberries. But this was a different world, a different time.

  He drove his battered 1985 blue pickup truck up along Scotchman Peak Road, his metal berry pickers and two gallon-size pails rattling in a cardboard box next to him. Finally he came to the steep grade that went up over Henrys Pass. Nearing the top of the grade, his rear tires began to spin on loose shale and gravel. When he reached the little road leading to his secret patch, he parked and turned the hubs on the front wheels, engaging the four-wheel drive. As he climbed back into the truck a faint chorus of screams reached him. The old logging road ran along the slope of the mountain off to his left. He walked over and peered in the direction of the screams. A green Chevy Suburban was parked a couple of hundred yards down the road. A dead tree lay in front of it. He got into his truck, drove down to the Suburban, and got out. The screams were moving toward him. He could tell they came from women, no doubt huckleberry pickers who had run into a bear. The bear was probably racing for his life over the top of the mountain. The ladies came around a curve in the road and were now huffing and puffing toward him, their huckleberry pails bouncing about from belts tied loosely around their waists. He leaned against the Suburban and waited.

  There were five of them, three matronly types and two younger ones. They gathered around him, all too breathless to talk. They kept pointing back down the logging road. He scanned the woods on both sides of the road, hoping not to see an irritable grizzly charging in his direction.