The Huckleberry Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery

by Patrick F. McManus

  “Give her a call, Daisy, and tell her to come see me next week. We may have this mystery solved in a few days. It won’t bring Orville back but we should know what happened to him. Get a warrant to search under Orville’s house for a body. You can take all day, because I won’t be in the office at all tomorrow. You’ll have to babysit the FBI agent while I’m in Spokane. Take her out to lunch, go shopping, anything. Think of something.”

  “Noooo!”

  “Daisy, I can’t take her to Spokane. She’ll turn me into a raving lunatic.”

  “I don’t care. You take her.”

  “Oh, all right, I suppose I have to. Just remember it’s your fault if I come back with my nerves in shreds. Now get out of here. I have to make a phone call.” He walked her to the door.

  Daisy went back to her desk, smiling. From across the room, Lurch watched her. He looked at Bo still standing in the doorway to his office. The sheriff mouthed the phrase “The old Tully magic.” Lurch smiled, shook his head, and went back to work.

  Tully pulled out his little dog-eared notebook and thumbed through it until he found Mitch’s number. He dialed.

  Someone answered. “Yeah.”

  “Red, this is Sheriff Bo Tully. Mitch around?”

  “Yeah. Hold on a sec, Bo.”

  Mitch came on. “Yo, Bo.”

  “Mitch, I appreciate your taking care of that little matter for me.”

  “No problem. The kid was terrified. Pugh came by and I turned her over to him. Hope that was okay.”

  “It was. Pugh is the best deputy I’ve got. Jenny’s in good hands. Did you notice anything about the guy who was after her?”

  “Not much. He drove a big ol’ white pickup truck with dual tires. From behind, that truck looks like a fat old lady kicked in the butt. I hate those trucks.”

  “Me too. You get a license-plate number?”

  “No. All I can tell you it was California. I doubt there’s but one pickup like that in all Blight County, maybe in all of Idaho.”

  “California! Excellent, Mitch! By the way, I understand somebody laid down some suppressing fire from an AK-47. You know anything about that?”

  “Nope. Must have been some guy passing through.” Mitch turned away from the phone. “You know about anybody firing an AK-47, Red? Red says no, Bo. He don’t know nothing about it.”

  “Tell Red whoever that fellow was, he probably saved Jenny.”

  “I’ll tell him, Bo.”

  “I understand you lost an AK-47. I’ll see if I can get it returned to you.”

  “No need, Bo. We’ve got a couple more.”

  Tully laughed. “Glad to hear it. I’ll send Pugh around to pick them up.”

  “Yeah, well, you ever need another favor, Bo, just call.”

  “I’ll do that, Mitch.”

  18

  TULLY MET ANGIE at the hotel café shortly after five the next morning.

  “You’re a mighty early riser, Sheriff.”

  Tully pulled out a chair and sat down. “Yeah. And this is after I milked the cow, fed the chickens, and slopped the hogs. Did I mention my well is drying up and I have to dig a new one?”

  Angie shook her head. “In one fell swoop, Bo, you wiped out any tiny bit of interest I might have had in you. The well finished it off.”

  He grabbed a menu from behind the napkin dispenser and perused it. “What, you don’t like us farmers?”

  “I was raised on a farm just like yours. Once I even helped my father dig a new well. It was ghastly! I get back there once a year to watch my folks work themselves to death. They claim to enjoy the life. Say it gives them a sense of independence.” She nibbled a triangle of toast.

  “That’s the same with me. If I get fired from my job as sheriff, I know I won’t starve to death. Maybe I’ll start making cheese from my goats’ milk.”

  “You never mentioned goats.”

  “Goats easily slip your mind. I do have a treat waiting for you in Spokane, though. We’ll stop by the art galley that handles my paintings, Jean Runyan’s.”

  “Don’t you have any of your paintings at home?”

  “Oh, yeah, I have four of my best watercolors up on a wall of my bedroom.”

  Angie laughed. “That sounds a lot like bait, Bo.”

  “You think so, Angie? I suppose it’s your FBI training that makes you so suspicious. No, the reason I have the paintings in the bedroom is, when I wake up in the morning and look at them, I think to myself, Dang, Bo, you are good! If you ever get sick of sheriffing, you can become a full-time painter.”

  Angie smiled. “I think that would make an awfully nice life, being a full-time artist.”

  “You forget the fun I have dealing with criminals day in and day out.”

  “Well, sure, there’s that.”

  • • •

  Tully drove up US 95 to Coeur d’Alene and took I-90 into Spokane. He took the off-ramp at Main Street and drove north to the Meadow Park Shopping Center. A private post office with an outside entrance was housed in the mall. The First Miners Bank sat at the northern edge of the shopping center. Tully stopped in a parking area across from the post office.

  He turned to Angie. “You really should come in with me. Pick up a few tips on crime investigation.”

  Angie opened her door. “Yeah, right. But it’s a federal crime to mess with post offices. If you do anything illegal, I’ll have to arrest you.”

  “Oh, in that case, maybe you should stay in the car.”

  “I’m going!”

  An elderly clerk watched them enter. She seemed pleasant enough. A skinny young man with a shaved head messed with something in the back. Apparently, the business also did packaging, and he seemed to be wrapping up a small carton. Mailboxes covered one wall. Tully found the one with the number Ray Crockett had given him.

  Walking over to the lady, he smiled at her as he took out his wallet and showed her his badge and identification. “Good morning, m’am. I’m Sheriff Bo Tully from Blight County, Idaho. This young lady is Agent Angela Phelps with the FBI. I wonder if you can tell us anything about a particular mailbox and the person who uses it.”

  “Good heavens, there are so many of them. People come and go all hours of the day and night.”

  “Your customers have access to their boxes at night?”

  “Oh, yes. And on holidays. We close off this part of the shop when we’re not here, but customers can still get their mail.”

  “Can you tell me when this box was first rented?” He handed her a slip of paper with the number 281 on it.

  “Oh, yes. I’ll check the records.” She called to the young man. “Viral, come and talk to these officers while I go check some records.”

  Sullen and bored, Viral slouched up to the counter. “Yeah?”

  Tully smiled. “I take it your folks own this postal station.”

  “Yep. How’d you guess that?”

  Tully shook his hand. “Just lucky. Can you tell us anything about Box Two-eighty-one?”

  “Ha! Well, nooo. It just sits there like all the other ones.”

  Tully gave him a grim smile. “Viral? Did I hear your name right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, Viral, have you ever thought of going into law enforcement?”

  The kid’s expression brightened. “I’ve thought about it. Why?”

  “Because as a sheriff I’m always on the lookout for sharp young fellows to hire as deputies. It’s dangerous work but you look like the kind of fellow who could handle it.”

  “Yeah! I really could, Sheriff!”

  Tully nodded. “I bet you could, Viral. If you ever get the urge, you come see me over in Blight City and we’ll talk about it. Now about Box Two-eighty-one. Can you tell me anything about it?”

  “Yeah, an old guy rented it a year or two ago. Ma can get you his name. He don’t stop by to check it very often. See, it fills up with junk mail and we have to empty it out and put all the overflow in one of those big boxes over there on the side. We
stick a key to the big box inside the little box. When he takes the mail out of the big box, the key stays stuck in it. Ma’s got a way of taking the key out so we can use the big box again. Sometimes he has a younger guy pick up his mail. Probably his son. We don’t see them very often. They must come mostly at night.”

  His mother came back and handed Tully a piece of paper. “I wrote his name down there, Sheriff.”

  Viral said, “The sheriff says he could use me in law enforcement, Ma.”

  “That’s nice, dear. As you can see, Officers, the old fellow who rented the box, his name is Poulson, Orville Poulson. For a couple of months, he would stop in and pick up his mail. I think he travels a lot. I don’t recall seeing him in a long while now, but somebody empties out both the boxes about once a month. He probably comes in at night.”

  Tully folded the paper and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Thank you very much, m’am. You’ve been a big help. By the way, would you mind looking to see if there’s anything in either box?”

  She walked around behind a partition and apparently checked the box. “Other than a couple of local ads, both boxes are empty.”

  “Thank you, m’am.” Interesting, he thought. There should have been at least one envelope for Crockett containing a Social Security check.

  He and Angie walked out to the Explorer and got in.

  Angie said, “You were kidding, weren’t you, about hiring Viral as a deputy?”

  “Not at all. There’s always a place in law enforcement for dumb. Right now I’m pretty low on dumb. They tend to get killed, rushing into situations the smarter deputies avoid.”

  “I see. You’re really a softhearted kind of guy, aren’t you, Bo?”

  Tully started the car. “Indeed I am, Angie. I’m pleased you noticed.” He nodded at the other side of the parking lot. “Now I want to talk to somebody at the bank over there. I see they have a couple of drive-ins.” He drove across the parking lot.

  Angie stayed in the car while he went in the bank. Tully assumed she was bored with practical police work. A perky young woman at a round desk asked if she could help him.

  “I hope so,” he said. He showed her his badge.

  Her mouth gaped. “Maybe I should get the manager, sir.”

  “That won’t be necessary. My question is very simple. I see you have a young fellow working the drive-in window. Now if someone drove up in that farthest station, the teller wouldn’t be able to see the customer all that well. Now, suppose that customer sent a check in through that brass vacuum tube over there. Would the teller cash it?”

  “Oh, not without proper ID.”

  Tully put his badge and ID back in his jacket’s inside pocket. “Suppose the customer slid his driver’s license into the carrier with the check.”

  “The teller would see if he had sufficient balance in the checking account to cover the check. If so, and the ID looked authentic, the teller would cash the check.”

  “Suppose it was a Social Security check.”

  “I think you had better talk to the manager about that.”

  “Oh, there’s no need to bother him.”

  “It’s a her.”

  “Sorry. You’ve been a great help, miss. Oh, I suppose the customer wouldn’t have any problem depositing the Social Security check, if he had the proper deposit slip.”

  “I shouldn’t think so. The teller would check the account, though, and ask the customer if he or she wanted a balance on the account. I know because I sometimes work the drive-in.”

  “I see. I bet you do a first-rate job, too.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you have to!”

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you are an extremely attractive young lady.”

  She blushed. “Why, thank you. That’s very nice.”

  “Oh, by the way, I don’t suppose you could check your computer and see if a Mr. Orville Poulson has an account here.”

  “Oh, no. That would be strictly against our policy! I could be fired for that, I’m sure.”

  “In that case, I guess I will have to talk to the manager.”

  The girl punched a number on her phone. “Betty, there’s a sheriff here at the front desk who would like to talk to you.” She listened briefly and hung up the phone. “She’ll be right out, Sheriff.”

  The manager came striding out of her office. She wore a nice gray suit, a businesslike white blouse, and rimless spectacles. She was quite attractive for a professional type, as Tully had expected. She held out her hand and Tully grabbed it and held it lightly in his grasp. She gave his hand a tug, but nothing Tully took for a serious effort. After a moment, he released her hand, but not until a slight blush appeared on the manager’s cheeks. “Yes?” she said. “I’m Betty McFarland, the manager of the bank. May I be of help, sir?”

  “I’m sure you may. This nice young lady here has provided me with all the information she thought proper, and you should be very proud of her. She has refused to tell me if you have an account for a particular person, though. That is certainly sensible, but since I am law enforcement, I thought maybe you could provide me with that information.”

  She asked to see his ID. Tully showed it and his badge to her. “What is the name, Sheriff?”

  “Orville Poulson.”

  She turned to the desk attendant. “Check for an account under that name, please, Janet.” The manager looked over her shoulder at the computer screen. “Yes, we do have a checking account under that name.”

  “Excellent!” Tully said. “You’ve been a huge help.”

  They both beamed at him. Tully briefly thought maybe he should open an account there.

  When he got out to the car, Angie was slipping her cell phone into her shoulder bag.

  “How did that go?” she asked.

  “Perfect. I’m beginning to see how Ray Porter, alias Crockett, has been pulling this off.”

  “Great,” she said. “By the way, would you like to talk to Craig Wilson’s uncle—one Ted Wilson?”

  Tully stared at her. “How on earth . . . ”

  “I won’t bother you with the details, but I do have my connections. Right at this moment he’s crossing the Indiana border into Illinois, hauling a generator the size of a small house on the back of his truck.”

  “You’re amazing, Angie!”

  She smiled. “You don’t think the bureau would send a rank amateur to deal with the famous Bo Tully, do you?” She handed him a slip of paper with a number written on it. “I’ve been on the phone with Ted while you were fooling around in the bank, Sheriff. I saw you working your magic on those two ladies. The one is much too young for you, though.”

  Tully shook his head and dialed. A gruff voice answered. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Wilson?”

  “Yep. You’re the young lady’s associate, I take it.”

  “Associate? Yes, that sounds about right.”

  “She sounds pretty nice on the phone. Don’t ask me how the devil she hunted me down, but I’d hold on to that one if I was you.”

  “I’ll definitely try to, Mr. Wilson. What I need to talk to you about is your nephew Craig.”

  Wilson swore. “What’s he done now, he’s got a sheriff after him? That boy will drive me crazy.”

  Tully could hear honking and the sound of cars whizzing by.

  “I don’t know anything he’s done, Mr. Wilson. The reason I’m looking for him, I think he can help me solve a serious crime. For that same reason, I think the people who committed the crime may be looking for him, too. His life is in danger.”

  Wilson was silent for a long moment. “Sheriff, I haven’t laid eyes on him all summer. I let him stay at my house in Spokane but he’s been working over in Idaho on a farm or something. If he’s his usual industrious self, he’s probably not making much money. I told him in case of emergency I’d stuffed two hundred dollars up in the toe of one of my shoes in a closet off a bedroom he sometimes uses. It’s for him and he knows where it is. The next-door neighbors
have a key to my house. Get it from them and go check the shoe. If the money’s gone, he came back and took it. Usually it’s the police after him for some fool thing he’s done. He’s not smart enough to be a criminal and I hope he’s finally realized that.”

  “You have any idea where he might be?”

  “Like you said, he’s on the run from somebody. Go check the garage. There’s a set of shelves on one side with camping gear on it. He loves backpacking. If the red backpack is gone, that’s his.”

  “You got any idea where he might be?”

  “What Idaho county you sheriff of?”

  “Blight County.”

  “I’m sorry. Anyway, you familiar with Scotchman Peak?”

  “You bet.”

  “Well, you drive up into the Hoodoo Mountains and there’s a trailhead twenty miles north of Scotchman. It goes up to a little lake about straight down from the peak, the sheer side of the peak. You get an old Forest Service map, the trail should be marked on it. The trail is old. Used to go up to a lookout tower a few miles north of Scotchman. The tower’s gone now, but you hit the top of that ridge, the going should be pretty easy until you drop down to the lake. There used to be a trail from the ridge down to the lake. There’s half a dozen switchbacks leading down to the lake, with a lot of down timber across the trail. I don’t think anybody ever goes into the lake anymore, but Craig and I fished it once. It would be a good place for Craig to hang out. I doubt anybody else would hike in there.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “That’s my best guess, Sheriff. I think maybe Craig might have hit out for it and—wowee! Almost squished a hybrid. Bet I loosened up that fellow a bit. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, I’ve heard Craig talk about hiking in to the lake. If the money’s run out of that job in Idaho and he’s got the cops looking for him, I’d bet ten to one that’s where he’s gone. Nobody would think to find him in there.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Wilson. I’ll check out the shoe and the garage. If I find Craig, I’ll give you a call. Try not to squish any hybrids. Ford Explorers are okay, unless you come across one marked ‘Sheriff.’ ”

  Wilson gave Tully the address to his house and then beeped off.