Traces of the Past

by Steve Laracy

  “Great!” said Phil. “You see, it seems someone has been snooping around the diner and the tavern, trying to break in. Hilda lives in the house out back and has seen a shadowy figure wandering around and peering through the windows of the diner and tavern late at night. The Flagg sisters down the hill have also seen him. Now in a big city that may not seem strange, but here in Cordoba there’s not much crime, and there is nobody on the street after nine p.m.”

  Ben took up the story from there. “Nothing has been stolen or damaged as best we can tell, but it makes people nervous to know there’s a prowler about. The positive side is it gives the ladies something to gossip about.”

  “Well, let me ask a few questions,” I said, using my best PI voice. “First off, is there anyone new in town, say just moved here or visiting for a while?”

  “No new residents,” Ben replied. “And the only visitors are two fellows who showed up a couple weeks ago. One’s a lightning rod salesman. I don’t know what the other fellow does, but he tends to keep to himself. They’re both staying over at the boardinghouse down the street.”

  “Did they arrive together?” I asked.

  Phil answered this one. “They arrived separately but about the same time.”

  “Two weeks seems like a long time for a salesman to stay in a small town like this,” I offered.

  “He travels to Bell City and other towns in the area, plus he says the dry climate is good for his arthritis,” Phil said.

  “Okay, it looks like I’ll be spending time at the boardinghouse myself, so I’ll see what I can find out,” I said. “The second question I have is: Where’s the tavern? You say Hilda has seen the prowler hanging around the diner and the tavern from her house out back. But coming in I didn’t see a bar in the neighborhood.”

  Ben laughed. “You’re sitting in the tavern,” he said. He then clarified his remarks.

  It seemed the diner was owned jointly by Hilda Bluff and a man named Frank Blaine, who also lived in the house behind the diner. Hilda owned the daytime rights and operated the diner from 6 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. At 6 p.m. Frank took over, and the place became the Cordoba Tavern, where the locals gathered for a beer. This seemed like a strange arrangement and I had a few more questions about the relationship between Hilda Bluff and Frank Blaine, but they could wait. There were a few hours to kill before the tavern opened, and I wanted to check out the town of Cordoba and visit a certain lightning rod salesman. After a little more time spent lying about the old times with Ben, I got up to head back into the heat.

  As I was leaving, Ben said, “Since you’re stuck here for a few days, maybe you’d like to come with us over to the Tri-County Fair in Chiquita tomorrow. There’s rides and lots of food, and you can meet some of the locals.”

  “Maybe I will,” I said. A county fair in the middle of the desert seemed like just my cup of tea.

  I hate tea.

  > CHAPTER 3

  A STROLL AROUND TOWN

  When I hit the street, the heat hit me back. I took a minute to recover and get my bearings. I walked across the street to buy a pack of gum at the general store. As I was about to enter, a girl of about nine or ten came out of the store.

  “The store is closed for lunch, but if you need something you can get it and leave some money on the counter,” she said. As she spoke, she was munching on peanuts from a little cellophane bag. I decided that she must be the girl Phil had mentioned.

  “Isn’t it risky leaving the store unattended,” I asked, “with a prowler wandering around?”

  “Nah,” she responded. “He never takes anything, and he is only seen at night.”

  “How do you know it’s a ‘he’?” I was confident that my detective skills had impressed the girl.

  “I guess I don’t,” she replied, unfazed. “But I’ve seen the footprints left around the back of the diner, and they seem too big to belong to a lady. I eliminated Miss Bluff’s and Mr. Blaine’s footprints, and nobody else has a reason to be back there. And research says that most prowling and break-ins are done by males. Still, I guess you caught me.”

  Suddenly I didn’t feel so brilliant. I changed the subject and asked directions to the boardinghouse. The girl mentioned that she was going home for lunch and that the boardinghouse was in the same direction, so I walked along with her. As we walked, she did most of the talking.

  The girl’s name was Samantha Fremont. She had bright red hair and a smattering of freckles, was nine years old and lived on Fourth Street with her parents, Bert and Millie, and her younger brother, Skipper. The boardinghouse was also on Fourth Street on the other side of Main Street and was owned and operated by Samantha’s aunt, Felicity Fremont. Samantha, or Sam, as she preferred to be called, worked at the general store during the summer, and Mr. Childers paid her with a bag of peanuts while he took his break at the diner.

  “You could say that I work for peanuts,” she joked.

  I told her I was a private investigator and a friend of Ben Nye’s, and he had asked me to investigate the strange happenings at the diner.

  “I can help you!” Samantha exclaimed. “Please let me help. My dream is to be a private investigator. My name is Samantha, but everybody calls me Sam because I want to be like Sam Spade.”

  “That explains your earlier observations, but I work alone.”

  “Please, please, please! I can do your legwork. And you don’t have to pay me. And I know everybody in town, so I can hang around and talk to everyone without being suspicious.”

  “Well, okay,” I gave in. I could use someone to run errands, and I could pick her brains concerning the citizens of Cordoba. Besides, she seemed bright for a nine-year-old.

  We had reached the boardinghouse, which was an old Victorian building with a porch that extended all around the building. Sam led me up the steps, across the porch, and into the hall of the house. The hall had double doors on each side, the left leading to a dining room and the right into a parlor. Straight ahead was a stairway leading to the second floor. To the left of the stairway was a passage that that led to the kitchen. This was our destination since the proprietor was in the kitchen preparing lunch. Felicity looked up as I walked in with Samantha and said, “You must be Milo.” She wiped her hand on a dishtowel and extended it toward me.

  I shook her hand and said, “Word travels fast around here.”

  “Ben called from the diner and said you were on your way.”

  “I guess Ben didn’t want me to surprise you.”

  Sam said, “My dad says the three fastest forms of communication in Cordoba are telephone, telegraph, and tell Mayor Nye.”

  Felicity and I both laughed. Sam told Felicity about our discussion on the way over to the boardinghouse, so I took the opportunity to check out Felicity.

  She was pretty with light-red hair, almost blonde, I guess what they call a strawberry blonde. Her face was oval-shaped, with a small, upturned nose, and green eyes, and looked to be in her late thirties, early forties. She was wearing a housedress and an apron but had a classy look and was easy on the eyes.

  As I stared, I could see she was half listening to Sam while giving me a quick once-over at the same time. I had a few years on her, and my physique isn’t what it used to be, but she didn’t turn away in disgust.

  “Will you be staying awhile?” Felicity asked. I hoped that she hoped I was.

  “Well, the visit was planned as a day trip, but car troubles may keep me here for a few days.”

  “We’ll take good care of you while you’re here,” Felicity responded. Although I wouldn’t mind spending time with her, I wasn’t looking forward to an extended stay in a backwater town like Cordoba.

  “Mr. Forbes is a private detective, just like I want to be,” said Sam. “He’s investigating the happenings at the diner. “

  “I think that may be more the Flagg sisters’ imaginations than anything else.” Felicity laughed. “There’s not much crime around here. I would think this would be a dull place for a man like you.”r />
  I had to agree with that, although investigating a prowler was no less exciting than most of my experiences in San Diego.

  “Mr. Forbes and I want to investigate your guests since they are the only strangers in town, don’t we, Mr. Forbes?” Sam continued. “I’m Mr. Forbes’s assistant, aren’t I, Mr. Forbes?”

  “I think you should let me do the talking, Sam. And since you’re my assistant, why don’t you call me Milo.”

  Felicity frowned, “I don’t know that I approve of spying on my guests. They seem respectable, although Mr. Costello seems a little mysterious. I’m sure they would not be involved in criminal activities.”

  “I don’t want to spy on them,” I replied. “I just want to ask a few questions.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, you’ll want to stay for lunch. Mr. Costello is seldom late when meals are served,” Felicity responded with a wink.

  “Can I stay too, Aunt Felicity?” asked Sam. “Mr. For—Milo—might need me to take notes.”

  “All right, Dick Tracy,” Felicity laughed, “but run home and tell your mother you’re eating over here.”

  The last instruction was unnecessary as Sam was already out the kitchen door and halfway across the hall.

  > CHAPTER 4

  LUNCHTIME

  “I prepared a simple lunch—salad and cold chicken,” said Felicity as we sat at the table in the dining room. The room was cooled by a couple of ceiling fans on either side of the long rectangular table. “Not like a fancy restaurant in San Diego.”

  “A normal San Diego lunch, at least for me, comes in a sack and is ordered through the mouth of a large clown,” I said. “This will do just fine.”

  Mr. Carmine Costello, who had already been seated at the table when we entered with the food, and to whom I had just been introduced, laughed at the last remark. He was a large, corpulent fellow with slicked-back black hair and a five o’clock shadow, sort of like Fred Flintstone’s. He had a small scar on his left cheek and looked like a man you wouldn’t want to cross.

  “I agree with Mr. Forbes,” he said. “In my line, frequently traveling, you eat in many places, but not many as fine as yours, Felicity.”

  “Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Costello,” Felicity said. “We don’t have any fast-food places in Cordoba. It’s the diner or the home. We may seem behind the times, but we like it that way.”

  “Just what is your line, Costello?” I asked.

  “A detective is never off duty,” he chided me. “I’d rather not discuss it right now, but perhaps at a later time we can have a talk.” He gave me a sinister smile.

  Also at the table were Sam and Silas Collins, the lightning rod salesman, who had been eating with his head down and hadn’t spoken since the meal began. He was thin and his face was weather-beaten, so it was difficult to determine how old he was.

  Sam, sensing a chance to join the investigation, said to Collins, “It must be interesting being a traveling salesman. You get to go to so many interesting places, I bet.”

  “Not so many, child,” he responded. “I spend a good deal of time in motel rooms.”

  I could have used my vast knowledge of lightning rods to flush him out, but I had no such knowledge, so I said, “I didn’t know there was much lightning in the desert.”

  “It comes in spurts,” he said. “Out in the desert, it’s called monsoon. Mostly stays high up and just puts on a little fireworks display, but every so often it spots a tree or a house or even a person that gives off a certain vibration, and then it takes aim.”

  “You speak of lightning as if it could think and make decisions on where to strike,” said Felicity.

  “Oh, it don’t have a brain, per se,” said Collins, “and it ain’t really thinking, but still it attacks with a method. Maybe it’s electrical currents, or maybe something more sinister, but it has a plan.

  “I can always tell, by sight and smell, which houses need a lightning rod. It’s a gift, or maybe a curse. This house, for instance, no harm will come to it. On the other hand, the big mansion on Fifth Avenue, there’s a house that needs a lightning rod if ever there was one. I can sense it in my bones.”

  “He means Mrs. Cavendish’s house,” Sam explained. “She’s the town matron, whatever that is.”

  Since Collins again had his head down and seemed to have no more to say, I helped myself to another piece of chicken and addressed Felicity. “Do you have any other guests staying at the boardinghouse?”

  “Only Fred Dobbs. But he’s more of a permanent resident. He’s been staying here for several years. He performs odd jobs around town.”

  “Odd is the right word to describe him if you ask me,” interjected Mr. Costello.

  Felicity said, “He’s a very nice man, even if he has some strange habits. He used to be a professional boxer and suffered some concussions that affected his thinking.”

  “Where is Dobbs today?” I asked.

  “I saw him heading for Indian Charlie’s ranch this morning,” said Sam. “He’ll spend the day out there helping Indian Charlie.”

  I didn’t know what Felicity was referring to when she mentioned Dobb’s strange habits, but he’d have to be talented to defeat Silas Collins in a strange contest.

  > CHAPTER 5

  A CONVERSATION WITH FELICITY

  After lunch, Collins went back to his room for a nap and Costello excused himself to take a walk around town. I thought of following him but preferred to stay and spend a little time with Felicity. I decided to put my pint-sized assistant to use.

  I pulled Sam out to the hall, outside hearing range, and asked her if she’d like to do some legwork.

  “Sure, but I have to get back to the store before long. I guess I can spare a little time, though.”

  “Good girl,” I said. “I want you to follow Mr. Costello for a while and see where he’s going. He won’t do anything suspicious during the daytime, but it might help to know his movements.”

  “Okay,” said Sam. “I can tail him like Sam Spade, so he’ll never know he’s being followed. I’ll report back later tonight.”

  I left Sam to her task and went to the kitchen. It didn’t take much convincing for Felicity to let me help with the dishes. “How long will it take to fix your car?” Felicity asked as I dried a plate.

  “Hector Suarez says it may take several days. I hope you have a vacancy.”

  “I always have rooms available. Cordoba isn’t a big tourist attraction. I’ll show you the room when we finish here.”

  The room was up the stairs to the left and toward the front of the house, just past Costello’s room. This was convenient since for now, he was my main suspect. The room itself was a no-frills affair with just a bed, a dresser, a chair, and a side table, but the room was clean, the bed and chair looked comfortable, and there was plenty of light coming from the window that faced the front of the house. As we headed back down the passageway, Felicity explained the layout.

  “The bathroom and shower are on the right just past the stairs. Mr. Costello has the room next to yours. Fred is across from you on the other side of the stairs. Mr. Collins is next to him, across from Mr. Costello. The rest of the rooms are vacant.”

  She then offered me a cup of coffee and showed me into the parlor. While she went to make the coffee, I inspected the room. All the walls were covered with bookcases, filled with books. There was a fireplace on the back wall and the usual collection of parlor furniture—a well-worn sofa and some worn easy chairs with accompanying coffee table and side tables.

  Felicity returned with a tray, upon which were a coffeepot, two cups, and containers of cream and sugar. She placed it on the appropriately named coffee table and we both sat on the sofa.

  “You must be quite a reader, judging by your library,” I began.

  “I like to read,” she replied, “but this is the town library, and I am the unofficial town librarian. Anyone can come and borrow a book and return it when they are finished.”

  “Don’t you keep
track of who has what?”

  “No, we trust each other around here. We have quite a few borrowers, and as you can see, there aren’t a lot of books missing. But tell me, what are your first impressions of Cordoba?”

  “It seems a nice enough place and the people are friendly, but it seems like it might be a little slow-moving for my taste.”

  “It might be a dull place for a ‘city slicker’ like you, but we like it that way. Everybody knows everybody and likes everyone. We don’t have a lot of modern conveniences, but we do just fine without them.”

  “What do you do for entertainment? I didn’t see a theater or any nightclubs driving in.”

  “There’s a movie theater in Bell City if anyone is interested. But when we want to watch a movie, we watch it here. As well as the town library, this is also the town movie theater. There’s a projector and screen out in the hall closet. We set up the screen on the wall opposite the fireplace, move some furniture, add some chairs, and voila, instant Grauman’s. We’re showing The Big Sleep tomorrow night if you care to join us. This will be a big hit with Fred, who is a Humphrey Bogart fan, and with your miniature private eye, Sam.”

  “I’ll mark it on my calendar,” I said.

  Ignoring the sarcastic tone, Felicity continued. “The Cordoba Tavern is the big nightspot. You’ll want to stop by tonight to meet some of the locals. I’m sure Ben will be there. There’s as much soda drinking as beer. It’s just a chance to get together and mingle.”

  “Yes, what’s the deal with that place? Diner by day and bar at night. And Hilda Bluff and Frank Blaine. They live together and each owns half of the place. What’s their relationship?”

  “Hilda and Frank moved here from back east years ago and brought the diner with them. They bought the house behind the diner, which includes the land where the diner sits. I gather you met Hilda already. You may have a better idea of their relationship once you meet Frank,” she said.

  I made a note to hit the Cordoba Tavern when it opened and decided to check out the rest of the town. I asked Felicity to be my guide, but she declined, saying she had work to do, and I might find a small-town girl boring anyway. She was wrong about that. I thought she was the prettiest librarian I’d ever seen.