Mayhew took another pull on his beer.
“Last night, for instance,” the doctor said, “he began formicating.”
I had never seen a look like that on the face of the lawman who’d seen everything; a look of sheer horror.
“Right there in your house?” Blacke yelped.
“Of course,” Mayhew said blandly.
“With who?”
Blacke’s question was nearly a roar. I either had to leave the room to dissolve in hysterics or help the situation. For the sake of future domestic peace, but not without a twinge of regret, I chose the latter course.
“Blacke,” I said, “the doctor said formicate. With an m.”
“Oh,” Blacke said. “And would someone be so kind as to tell me what in blazes formmmmmmicate with an m means?”
I yielded to the doctor. After all, he got us into this.
“It means,” he said, “to have the false sensation that ants are crawling all over one’s body.”
Blacke rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know, judging from Harlan’s usual state of cleanliness, you’d think he’d be used to things crawling on him.”
After the doctor finished laughing, he launched what promised to be a spirited defense of his patient’s sanitary habits.
He was interrupted by a noise outside, something that was definitely not crawling. A horse, at the gallop, coming down Main Street at top speed. The hoofbeats stopped; there was a thud, and they resumed, fading quickly with distance. By the time I got to the door, all I could see was a cloud of dust at the far end of town.
22
THEN I LOOKED IN the other direction and saw what had made the thud. A body lay in front of the sheriff’s office, half on and half off the boardwalk there.
“Doctor!” I yelled, only to discover that the man was right behind me. “You’re going to be needed.”
Heads were peeping out of windows as Mayhew and I ran across the dirt street toward the body. Despite the doctor’s longer legs, I got there first.
I rolled it over and saw what I expected to see—the face of Joseph Feathers.
“He’s dead, of course,” the doctor said. “Strangled.”
I appreciated the “of course.” It didn’t take a medical degree, or even such layman’s knowledge as I possessed, to tell that. The livid mark on the neck, the popping eyes, the protruding tongue, the bluish tinge added to Feathers’s already dusky face. It was there for everyone to see.
There was also a note, pinned to the soiled white shirt. It said: THIS IS THE FIRST. I patted the body down, not the pleasantest thing I’ve ever done, and found nothing of interest. There was no sign of any of the money he had been so zealous to protect from me.
A voice behind me said, “You know what this means,” and I jumped a yard in the air.
Blacke had materialized on the scene with Rebecca, as always, behind the chair.
“I realize that this means Muller is probably around. Does it mean anything else?”
“It means we have to be extra careful, and it would help to catch the real poisoner as soon as possible.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely, “for saying ‘we.’ I’ve been getting mighty lonely in this job. As for the second thing, didn’t you hint the other day that you knew who the real poisoner was?”
“I might have given that impression, yes.”
Mayhew was still doing doctor things with the corpse. Then he stood up and said, “I’ll have a couple of men bring the body to my office for autopsy.” He stood there for a few moments, then added, “I would certainly like to know your thinking on this matter, Blacke.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” the ex-lawman said flatly. “Not only wouldn’t you believe me, you’d probably want to lock me up. And you’d probably talk Booker here into doing it.”
I sniffed. “I’m tempted to lock you up until you talk.”
Blacke grinned. “Becky would cut off your ears.”
I decided not to risk it. “All right, all right, have it your own way. You always do, anyway. Rebecca, don’t let anything happen to him until he talks, okay?”
“I won’t let anything happen to him,” she said with a smile. Then she brought a hand to her mouth.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
Blacke craned his neck to try to get a look at her.
“Look at us,” Rebecca said scornfully. “Laughing and joking as we stand over a corpse. What a bunch of ghouls. Are you really that jaded. And, God forbid, am I?”
Blacke reached over his shoulder and patted her hand. “No, darlin’, we’re just too big to cry or to yell about how scared we are. The doctor and Booker have things in hand here. Let’s go home.”
They left; soon, the doctor’s body-carrying recruits arrived, and I went inside. I felt awfully inadequate for somebody the Great Lobo Blacke had announced had things “in hand.”
Stick Witherspoon let me in. “I was coming out,” he said, “but I saw the three of you out there, and I figured it’d be just as well to keep the door locked.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just wish you’d kept it locked.”
“But then you couldn’t have got in just now—oh, I get it. Getting to you, huh?”
“It got to me days ago, Stick. Have you eaten anything?”
“Oh, sure. Mrs. Sundberg brought me a fine dinner, said Blacke told her he’d be keeping you kind of late. Uh, Booker, if you don’t mind my asking...”
“Yeah?”
“What the hell just happened out there?”
I looked back toward the cells. “I’ll tell you in a while, okay? Look, I’m taking the prisoner upstairs for a few minutes.”
Stick gave a good-natured shrug. “You’re the sheriff,” he said.
“No I’m not,” I said distinctly, and went to fetch Herkimer.
“Mr. Booker,” he said when he saw me. “It’s good to see you.” Then he saw the keys in my hand. “What are you doing?”
“Relax,” I said.
“But is it safe? If all doubts about our innocence have not been laid to rest, I think I’d just as soon stay here. This is quite a comfortable jail, actually. And I do appreciate the special care you’ve taken of the princess.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“We’re just going upstairs to see the princess,” I told him. “We’re not leaving the building.”
At that, he visibly relaxed, but he tensed up again when I told him that the princess and I had had a long talk, and that I knew her real name and their relationship.
“Who else have you told?”
“Just Lobo Blacke. Don’t worry, we won’t spread it around. Unless it becomes necessary to use it to clear you.”
We were halfway up the stairs by now, and Herkimer, walking ahead of me, was feeling it. He had to puff between every few words. “How could that... knowledge... be of any help?”
“I can’t imagine,” I told him. “But I’ve given up trying to predict things. If I could predict things, I’d be a gambler.”
And if I had any brains, I thought, I’d be back in my rooms off Printing House Square, in New York, writing stories about the West of my imagination.
I knocked on the door and told Daisy I’d brought her father to visit her. This was designed to communicate two things—one, that everybody knew what everybody knew, and two, for God’s sake, don’t be naked when I open the door.
I took my time about the locks and bars, just in case, and at that, I could swear she was buttoning the top button of her dress as I opened the door.
She saw her father and ran to embrace him, saying “Daddy” in that remarkable Oklahoma voice. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m sure everything is going to turn out okay.”
I cleared my throat. “Not everything,” I said.
They turned to me, with the same look of apprehension on their faces. For the first time, I could see a family resemblance between them.
“Did you hear the galloping outside before?”
“I heard it,” Dai
sy said. “I tried to see out the window what was goin’ on, but you were all too close to the building.”
“Someone dropped off a body in front of the jail—the body of Joseph Feathers. I’m sorry.”
“It’s my fault,” Daisy whispered. “I let him get away. If I’d let Mr. Booker bring him in with us, he’d be okay now.”
“Shhh, Princess, shhh,” her father said. His voice was smooth, but his eyes glistened with tears. “Under all his smiling, Joseph had an anger in him that wouldn’t let him rest. It was the anger that hurt him, not you. Not you.”
The old man turned to me. “What happened?”
“As I told you before, one of the poisoning victims was the son of an outlaw. We—Lobo Blacke and I—think they chanced to meet”
“But that means...” Herkimer didn’t want to say it. That was all right with me, because I didn’t much want to hear it.
But he pressed on and got it out. “That means the outlaw you mentioned is around here somewhere. And that he’ll be coming for the princess and me. I don’t care so much for myself—”
“It’s permissible to care for yourself,” I told him. I once had someone determined to kill me, and I couldn’t think about anything but myself.
Herkimer shook his head. “I’m an old man who’s lived his life foolishly. But the prin—my daughter must be protected.”
He stood up and threw out his chest. A hint of his spellbinding public voice returned.
“In fact, I shall turn myself over to this man’s vengeance in return for a promise to spare my daughter.”
“Daddy!” Daisy screamed.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” I said. I wondered why I was so angry at him for this gesture. I suspected that some part of me was tempted to take him up on it.
“I’ve had too much trouble keeping you alive so far to let it go to waste now. Come on downstairs, Dr. Herkimer. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
23
IT WAS EVEN BUSIER than I had anticipated.
The first thing I did when I got up that morning, after shaving and dressing, was to go check my prisoners.
The princess greeted me in a sedate quilted robe. It occurred to me that Rebecca must have helped fill out the prisoner’s wardrobe with some things of her own.
“I just stopped by to see if you were all right,” I said.
“I’m fine. I had a little trouble going to sleep last night, but I’m all right now. Dad was right about Joe. I loved him, but it wasn’t a happy life he lost, and it never would have been, either.”
“Anything I can do for you?”
“Well, right now, you can kiss me.”
She didn’t give me a chance to tell her that wasn’t exactly what I meant. It was a nice way to start the day, at that.
“Anything else?” I asked. “Now that that’s taken care of, I mean.”
Her face got grim.
“Yes,” she said. “When you catch the one who did this—What the hell are you smilin’ at?”
“What were you going to say?” I demanded. “String him up? Or shoot him down?”
“I don’t much care which.”
“I didn’t think so. Just like the people who wanted to string up you and your father didn’t much care, either.”
“That’s different!”
“How?”
“We’re innocent.”
“Everybody’s innocent until a jury says otherwise. That’s the whole point.”
“You’re just tryin’ to confuse me! The skunk who killed my brother deserves to die.”
“Sure, he does. After a trial. Anyway, the whole thing isn’t worth our arguing about In a day or two, thank God, I won’t be the sheriff around here anymore, and finding the killer won’t be my responsibility. Besides, if it really is Paul Muller who’s done this, he’ll be a lot more likely to shoot me down than the other way around.”
Daisy put her soft brown hands on my shoulders. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“I certainly do.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“I’m not going to go out and get shot just to prove you wrong, you know.”
“You’d better not get shot for any reason,” she said. “I don’t think I’m done with you yet.”
I took her hands off my shoulders and kissed them. “You are for this morning, I’m afraid. Stick will be here any minute, and I’ve got work to do.”
I went downstairs and had a few words with Dr. Herkimer. Despite his brave words of the night before, he had had a tougher night of it than his daughter had. His eyes were staring and rimmed with red, and his voice was a croak when he talked.
I know about losing a mother; and in a fundamental way, though he was still back up the Hudson breathing fire on prospective officers, I had lost my father as well. I tried to imagine what losing a child must be like, but I couldn’t. I just knew intuitively that it must be the worst kind of grief.
By the time I finished with Herkimer, Stick was waiting patiently outside. I let him in.
“How are things at Dr. Mayhew’s?” I asked.
He shrugged. “ ’Bout the same. Had to tie Asa Harlan to the bed. Every once in a while, he gets to thinking he’s got ants crawling on him, and he’s like to beat himself to death trying to get them off.”
Stick shuddered. “Grisly sight. I think I’d rather have a gunshot wound.”
“You ought to know,” I said.
I told him I’d be out most of the day, so he should tell me now if he needed anything, and I’d make sure to have it sent. He said he’d already done that on the way over, so everything was fine.
I told him he’d make a better sheriff than I ever would, and he surprised me. Instead of laughing it off, he rubbed his chin and said that unless he was mistaken there was an election next spring, and who could tell.
I made a mental note to tell Blacke about that. A sheriff in Le Four who wasn’t in Lucius Jenkins’s pocket might be a big help in furthering Blacke’s plans.
And practically the first person I ran into as I walked out the door was Lucius Jenkins.
I almost didn’t recognize him. Gone was the Sunday suit, the derby hat, the gold-thread vest, and the flower (fresh from his wife’s conservatory) that he wore in his lapel every day, winter and summer.
Today, Lucius Jenkins was dressed like a cowboy, with a no-nonsense Stetson on his bald head, dungarees, and a work shirt with a leather vest over it.
It made a vast difference. He looked younger and stronger, even bigger. He looked a lot less like a criminal mastermind, but he seemed much more of an immediate menace.
He also seemed profoundly irritated by the largish young man who was walking alongside him. He was about my age and height, but much broader, carrying a load of muscle under a fairly comfortable layer of fat.
He had all of this stuffed into a brown suit that looked as if it had not known the touch of an iron since it had been inexpertly packed some time before.
“It’s my own father, Mr. Jenkins. I have a right. At least as much as you have to be there.”
“Probably,” Jenkins admitted, “since I’m blamed if I know what the hell I’ve got to be there for. I’m a busy man.”
The young man waved that off. “That’s about the joint option you and Dad took on that grazing land across over in Dakota. He always said something about you getting hold of it when he died.”
From this, and from a sort of unformed facial resemblance, I deduced that this was Junior Simpkins, son of the late Big Bill, unfavorite stepson of Mrs. Simpkins. It was nice to have one mystery solved, at least.
“Good morning,” I said brightly.
“Morning,” Jenkins said grumpily. He performed introductions. When young Simpkins heard I was the deputy, and acting sheriff, he shook my hand with enthusiasm. “I have great admiration for you, sir. I’m sure you’ll bring my father’s killer to justice.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you rather I just shot him?”
&nbs
p; “Oh, no. I’m a firm believer in the law.” He turned to Jenkins. “That’s why it’s so ironic that I can’t be at the reading of my own father’s will. I know my stepmother doesn’t like me; I know my father and I had our difficulties—although we had begun corresponding again, at last, a few months ago.”
“Well, apparently his health was slipping,” I said.
Junior looked interested. “Was it? He never mentioned that. But you see, that’s exactly the sort of thing I want to know. It wasn’t necessary for Wick Ploset to hint my father left me nothing. I didn’t expect him to leave me anything. I don’t need anything. I have a fine furniture business in Denver, and it’s thriving. I don’t have all the drive and ability of a Big Bill Simpkins, perhaps, but in my own way, I’ve made a success on my own, and I think my father would have been proud of that.”
He turned to Jenkins again.
“So won’t you please help me? I know that Ploset is your lawyer, too. In fact, my father used to say that you led him around by the pe—” Junior coughed. “That Lawyer Ploset had a high regard for your good opinion. I know that if you prevailed upon him, he’d let me in. It’s a last message from my father on earth, and I... I just want to hear it, that’s all.”
Jenkins seemed to be hesitating. I put my two cents in.
“Oh, go ahead, Mr. Jenkins,” I told him. “Imagine how Abigail would feel if anything were to happen to you while she was away.”
Jenkins’s head came up as if my words had been a gunshot. His eyes were very cold, staring at me, trying to decide how much I’d meant by what I just said.
After a good half minute, Jenkins turned to Junior and said, “All right. I’ll get you in. After that, you’re on your own.”
Junior raised his right hand. I could see calluses all over it. That was the hand of a carpenter, all right.
“I’ll sit in a corner, and I won’t say a word, I promise.”
“That’s fine,” I said, beaming. “And would you both hang around town for a little while afterward? I’d like to talk to you both about something important.”
That gave them a little more fellow feeling, wondering what I had in mind now.
Fatal Elixir Page 15
