by David Bishop
The sheriff went to the end of the bar and used the house phone for a moment. While on the phone he picked up one of the shot glasses and threw down its contents in one gulp.
“Who are you?” the sheriff asked two minutes later as he slipped into the booth across from Linda. “I don’t know you. Just get into town?”
“That’s right, Sheriff Blackstone. I came to town a couple of hours ago on the mid-day flyer.”
Named after the comic strip character, Reggie had been a junior the year Linda graduated from high school. Even at that age Reggie was known for his consumption of beer. Apparently he graduated to the hard stuff. She was glad he came to talk with her. This interview would be a good test run before her inevitable up close and personal meeting with King Billy.
“I could tell it stopped,” the sheriff said. “The mid-day sounds different when it does. Not that it stops all that often.” In a juvenile and naked display of authority, he reached over and took one of her three remaining fries. “What’s your business in Cranston?”
Before answering, she ran the pad of her index finger along the lines of a name which had been gouged into the wood table top. Then she looked up. “Respectfully, Sheriff, everyone in this place can verify I was sitting right here when that poor man was shot, so clearly I’m not a suspect.”
“Then perhaps you can help me with another ongoing investigation, an arson that burned down the horse barn and part of the corral fencing out on the Cranston ranch. That there’s Billy Cranston at the bar—the man who came in with me.”
“I haven’t heard a thing, Sheriff, but then I just got here. When did this happen?”
“Coupla days ago. I was just wondering if someone you know hereabouts told you about it. You know, idle talk that don’t get repeated all that much in front of the sheriff.”
Reggie Blackstone still doesn’t speak properly, Linda thought before saying, “I don’t know anyone in town, Sheriff. Like I said, I just got here. It was a random stop on my part. I was ready for a break from train travel.”
During this exchange, his eyes never left hers. Without looking away, he placed the pilfered fry on his outstretched tongue and suggestively drew it slowly back into his mouth. After using his versatile tongue to move the yet-unbitten fry to one side, he said, “I ask again, what’s your reason for being in our town?”
The best way to deal with the sheriff is the way I dealt with Reggie Blackstone the bully when we were children. Not allow him to intimidate me.
“All right, Sheriff, let me put it this way, I’m an American citizen exercising my right to go where I please without having to account to anyone for my reasons. . . . No disrespect, Sheriff Blackstone, but my travel plans are my own business. However, in the spirit of cooperation, I will tell you I was just passing through. I love train travel but after a few days of it I need some time on terra firma. I love small towns so I got off here for a respite.”
“Then you plan to move on immediately? Tomorrow, Monday’s midday flyer, perhaps?”
“I had planned to do just that. Now, being part of, in a manner of speaking, a murder, I may hang around for a while. I love to read murder mysteries.” As she said that, Linda held up her print copy of Who Murdered Garson Talmadge, a Matt Kile Mystery that she had been reading when Carlos hit the floor. “This is my first opportunity to experience a murder up close and personal. I hope that doesn’t sound morbid. I’ve always been an unapologetically curious person.”
“No other reason for being here?”
“Asked and answered, Sheriff.”
When she said that, his eyebrows went up. This phrase was most often heard from attorneys.
“What do you do for a living, Miss?”
“Because I was a witness to this unfortunate crime, you have a right to ask me some things. My name is Carol Benson and I am staying at the Frontier Hotel. I saw only what I overheard the men at the bar tell you: Carlos, at least that’s the name I’ve heard, opened the door and fell. The bartender checked him and said he had been shot and was dead . . . . I think we’re through here, Sheriff.”
His eyebrows went up again. She expected he would check her out, try to find out if she was an attorney, which she was not. Linda supported herself mostly through day-trading publicly held stocks and the interest off some certificates of deposit. Her manner had clearly left the sheriff unsure how to proceed with her. He would likely handle her carefully until he learned enough to ascertain whether or not she had the wherewithal to bite back.
She wanted the sheriff and Billy to have these uncertainties on their minds, rather than reaching back and trying to find her in a mental sea bottomed with rusted memories.
Not being recognized is as much about not allowing your behavior to be familiar as it is about your appearance being familiar. That was the image she wanted them to have of her: poised, articulate, and confident, far different than the shy and insecure Linda Darby, schoolgirl, who lingered somewhere in the dusty corners of their past. She had Sheriff Blackstone curious, and would have Billy Cranston curious once the sheriff reviewed his encounter with her after the two men left The Drop.
Just as the sheriff started toward the booth where the lone man waited, that man’s female companion came back in with a Mexican woman Linda assumed to be Carlos’s mother. The mother froze upon seeing Carlos on the floor. She stared at an irregular puddle of her son’s blood jagged as a muffler would if partially unwound from his neck. She dropped to her knees next to her son. Her hand over her mouth, she remained silent, her obvious pain loud.
The sheriff went to her, placed his hands under her elbows and picked her up as if she were a sack of grain wedged by a door during a prairie rainstorm. He led her back to the booth where the man had waited. The man got up and motioned for his woman and Carlos’s mother to sit together on his side of the booth. The woman who had escorted the mother to The Drop sat close and took Maria Molina’s hand.
The sheriff shook hands with the man. “Hello, Harry. Thanks for going and getting Ms. Molina.”
“My wife, Theresa, went to get her.”
“Sure. I saw them come in together.” The sheriff turned to the woman. “Thanks, Terry. I appreciate your doing that.” She nodded slightly.
The sheriff slid into the booth across from the two women. Harry snatched a chair from a nearby table and sat at the end of the booth.
The sheriff leaned against the wall at the end of the booth, his shoulders, angled away from Linda, slouched down about level with the top of the booth. With the music off, the room was quiet enough that Linda could hear the answers pretty well as they came toward her, but only bits and pieces of the sheriff’s questions, which moved away.
In the background, the bartender filled another glass with soda from his bar dispenser.
.“He’s a good boy, Sheriff,” the mother said, “never in any real trouble. Mr. Whipple at the feedlot tells me my Carlos is a good worker. No trouble, Sheriff. Why would anyone want to kill him?”
While the mother spoke, Linda quickly glanced toward the bar. One of the two men sitting there shook his head slightly while the other did the same with his eyebrows raised. Mud looked down. Clearly, these men did not agree with the mother’s characterization of her son.
The dishwasher came back out from the kitchen. The bartender pointed his index finger at the fresh glass of soda he had just filled and, rolling over his palm, used his thumb to point at Linda.
The sheriff asked something Linda couldn’t make out, but she did hear him enunciate one word, “enemies” somewhere around the middle of his question.
While the dishwasher limped over to her table, Linda heard the mother say, “No. Everyone likes my boy. He has no enemies. My Carlos is a good man. No trouble.”
Linda again discerned one word in the sheriff’s next question, “Girlfriend.”
“Carlos has no one special, Sheriff. My boy is, how you say, gorgeous. No, no, handsome. The girls like Carlos. He likes them. He is good to them, but he spends
too much of his money on them. No bad blood. No trouble. Who killed him, Sheriff?”
The old man left Linda’s cola, spilling a slight bit when he put his hand on the table to steady himself. He nodded without speaking or smiling, picked up her empty plate and turned to take it to the dirty dish tray at the end of the bar. Her attention drifted back to the sheriff who had moved to sit tall in the booth.
“My investigation is only beginning,” he said. “At the moment, I have no idea who killed your boy. Carlos was shot in the back of the head as he entered.”
The mother’s hand covered her lower face, squeezing her lips, pinching them in from the sides as her hand fisted over her mouth. Her eyebrows, thick and dark, furrowed in. Her forehead wrinkled as she fought to hold herself together while wrestling with the sheriff’s words.
After giving the mother a moment, the sheriff continued. “We just don’t know. I hope to find out. No one saw anything other than your son coming in the door and falling to the floor. No shots were heard and, far as I know right now, it appears only one was fired. I am sorry.”
Maria Molina turned her face into Theresa’s shoulder. The movements of her body revealed she was sobbing, hard, but not wailing. She let go of her mouth and turned back to face the sheriff. “Will you find out who did this, Sheriff?” She swiped at her tears without concern for smearing her modest eye makeup. “Promise me you will find the man who killed my boy, my Carlos.”
“I promise I will do what I can to find the man . . . or woman. I’ll make my inquiries, but I can’t be promising anything. As things develop I may need to talk with you some more. If I do, I’ll come by your place or stop in at your job.”
Maria closed her eyes and sat still, grappling with her misery. When she opened her smeared eyes, she nodded her head, hesitatingly. “Of course, Sheriff. Thank you.”
From the corner of her eye Linda saw Billy and Mud talking again, leaning close, the barkeep doing most of the talking. Mud using his head as a pointer, motioned toward her.
Billy moved down the bar, about the width of his body, far enough to block her direct view of his employee. Sheriff Blackstone moved to the end of the bar and downed the contents of the second shot glass.
Over the next half hour, Linda watched the local doctor who, from what was said, also acted as the county coroner, take Carlos’s body from The Drop. Fifteen minutes later, Sheriff Blackstone held the door open for Billy Cranston who, walking behind the sheriff, pushed the dishwasher out of his way. The old man staggered a bit but didn’t fall. Linda started to get up to help him. He looked at her and gently motioned with his hand for her to sit back down.
After the sheriff and Billy left, Linda closed her book, drank the last of her soda and got up. On the way out she paid her bill at the bar. The bartender followed her toward the door walking on his side of the bar.
“Goodbye, Miss. Thanks for coming in. Bad scene here today, sorry you had to be part of it.”
She stepped as near as she could, the bar between them at the end in the direction of the door. Away from the two men who remained on stools at the other end.
“Good burger. Thank you.”
“Call me Mud. Everybody does.”
“Sure, Mud. Was Carlos Molina a regular?”
“He stopped by most days, before or after work, to get a burger, have a brew, talk with the boys, normal stuff.”
“I thought I heard his mother say he worked at the feedlot,” Linda said. “He wasn’t dressed like a ranch worker.”
“No he wasn’t,” Mud said, confirming the obvious. “I don’t know anything about his work. Maybe it was his day off.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Linda said, while thinking: Carlos stopped in most days before or after work. This is a small town. It’s hard to believe the bartender didn’t know what kind of work Carlos did.
Chapter Four
Like Scrooge, Linda had her ghost of Christmases past which she needed to confront so she could move on with her life
Linda’s prospects for moving about in the shadows and folds of the town vanished when Carlos Molina hit the floor of the Do Drop Inn. Two unusual events had occurred in Cranston on the same day: Linda’s arrival and Carlos Molina’s departure. She expected the authorities would try their darnedest to draw a line connecting those two dots.
Linda had planned to use her first night in town talking with Vera Cunningham. She still hoped to do so. Once she spoke with Vera about the town, about her mother, and about Billy Cranston, she would plan day two. The way day one had played out she not only saw King Billy, she saw him in a way that put a certain focus on her as the town was asking: who was the stranger woman at the scene of the murder?
Vera’s Threads was in the front of Vera’s property in the original part of town where, for more than a hundred years, merchants had lived in back of or above their stores and shops. When Vera’s mother ran the place, a door from the showroom led to a workroom where she made clothes. To one side of the workroom was a living room and kitchen. Two bedrooms were upstairs where Vera’s mother added a second full bath. An outside wooden staircase led down to the side street, where Vera had been sitting when Linda walked from the train station to the hotel. The downstairs had a back door and porch that allowed Vera to enter and leave without having to come and go out through her shop.
By nine-ish the shops downtown were closed with the exception of the taverns. The Drop appeared to be continuing with business as usual—other than having today’s murder at its front door for a fresh, fascinating topic of discussion. A block farther down was the Stop-By Bar & Grill, owned and operated by a Methodist couple. Both drinking establishments had Main Street entrances which were more than two blocks away and a block over from Vera’s Threads. Vera’s store and home were on Elm Street, one block south of Main, at the corner of Second Street and Elm. At this hour, there was minor traffic on Main Street and even less on Elm at Second.
Linda went out the Frontier Hotel’s side entrance and walked to the rear alley. From there she meandered over to Elm, past Vera’s Threads, around the corner and onto the gravel street, really an alley, behind the shop. Just as she remembered, Vera’s shop/house had a single, detached garage which opened to that alley. A chain-link fence imprisoned by Confederate jasmine growing through its links started at the side of the garage and went to the corner of the property, up the side and over to the rear porch. Functionally, that back door served as the front door to the residence when Vera preferred not to go out through her shop onto Elm or down the outside stairs to Second Street.
The ground floor was dark, but a light was on in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Vera had not yet gone to bed. Linda knocked—two knocks followed by one, the way the girls had as children. She hadn’t consciously decided to knock in that manner. Linda repeated the knock before seeing the curtain on the upstairs window open. She stepped back off the porch onto the sidewalk and angled her face up toward that window. She was sure the woman looking down from the window was Vera.
Eventually, a faint light came through the glass insert in the upper third of the door, likely a stairwell light Vera sent on ahead as she descended from the upstairs bedrooms. In quick succession, the back porch light came on, the curtain over the glass insert parted, and the face of Linda’s best friend from her youth appeared on the other side. Her face showed no recognition.
Linda stayed off the porch and on the sidewalk to assure a comfort zone. Vera opened the door and stood in the doorway, her hair casual against her forehead, her face remaining quizzical.
“Do I know you?” she asked, confirming the look on her face.
“Vera,” Linda said,” looking around nervously. “Vera.” She lowered her voice to a hard whisper. “It’s Linda. Linda Darby. My God, don’t you recognize me?”
Actually, Linda was glad Vera hadn’t recognized her. If Vera didn’t easily know her, there was less chance Billy Cranston would or anyone else for that matter, particularly with her projecting Carol Benson and not Linda Darby.<
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Vera’s face relaxed, then illuminated. She came out onto the porch. Her arms outstretched. The two old friends hugged, held each other’s forearms and danced. Linda didn’t know how else to think of it. They were on their toes moving in a circle.
Linda prayed no one saw them. She pulled free, looked around, and asked, “Are you alone?”
“Yes. I’m alone.”
Linda walked into the house. Vera followed.
“What are you doing here?” Vera asked. “I mean, wow, it’s so great to see you, but why? You always said you would never return. N-e-v-e-r,” she repeated, dragging out each letter.
“You’re the only one who knows I’m here. No one else is to know. No one else can know. Not yet. Not till I’m ready.” Linda put out her little finger. Vera linked hers with Linda’s. Their first pinkies swear since they were something like ten years old.
“Listen, Linda, I’m so sorry about your mother. I’m guessing that’s the reason you came back. Why all this secrecy? What’s this all about?”
“I’ll tell you all of it. Just like always. But, I’m warning you, if I do you won’t get much sleep tonight.”
“I can sleep when I’m dead. Let me open a bottle of wine and then I’ll listen. You talk.”
Inside, Vera pointed toward a long couch before retreating into her kitchen, a slightly separated part of the same open area. Linda put her purse down and sat at one end of the couch. Vera opened a bottle of wine and brought it with two glasses to her kitchen table. Linda went over while Vera poured zinfandel. Vera put her heels up on the edge of one of the chairs, stretched her sleeping tee down over her knees, and wrapped her arms around her covered calves.
“Where are your things?” I mean, you’ve got to stay with me while you’re here.”
