Coffin Man

by James D. Doss

  And so they did. (Go for a walk.)

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  THE LAWMEN DELIBERATE

  After helping Sarah Frank wash and dry the supper dishes, Charlie Moon and Scott Parris had withdrawn to the rancher’s upstairs office.

  While his host stood peering though a window, the overfed chief of police was reviewing the culinary treats. Columbine prime beef is tender as roast turkey and Daisy’s peach pie is strictly world-class. And a fine feast like that made a man feel pleasantly lethargic. Never one to contend with the gentle tug of sleep, Parris stretched out on the rancher’s leather couch. This is just what the doctor ordered. He pulled the brim of his felt hat down to shade his blue eyes from the ceiling light’s glare, then clasped his fingers behind his head. “If you don’t mind, I’ll enjoy a short after-supper siesta.”

  Moon switched off the lights.

  “Thank you kindly.” Like Daisy on the park bench, Parris feigned a yawn that triggered the genuine article.

  * * *

  One might reasonably assume that the rancher, who is the very spirit of hospitality, has flipped the wall switch for the comfort of his drowsy guest. Not so. Charlie Moon darkened the room for his own convenience. As he peers through the window, the Ute’s pupils dilate, enabling his vision to penetrate the murky depths of the moonlit darkness. I thought so. He assured himself that this development was nothing to be particularly concerned about. But just to be on the safe side …

  * * *

  Little Butch Cassidy was in the bunkhouse. Like Scott Parris, Charlie Moon’s employee was horizontal. In this case, flat on his back in the sack. But the scrappy cowboy was not hankering for a nap. Butch was reading a signed first edition of B. E. Denton’s “A Two-Gun Cyclone.” Just when he got into a hair-raising true account of what would surely turn out to be a sure-enough Wild West shootout—Dr. Cassidy’s mobile phone began to play a few of his favorite phrases from Gustav Mahler’s Der Titan. That’s right—Dr. Cassidy. The Columbine cow-pie kicker had more graduate degrees than the dean of Rocky Mountain Polytechnic University. The cowboy-scholar pressed the communications device against his rightmost ear. “Cassidy here.”

  Charlie Moon’s voice boomed from the tiny telephone, “Daisy’s out for a walk.”

  “Right.” The Columbine employee who was assigned to keep an eye on the boss’s aunt already had his boots on the hardwood floor. “Which way’s she headed?” Cassidy listened to Moon’s reply. “I’m right on top of it.”

  Wide awake now, Scott Parris chuckled in the darkness. “So what d’you figure your elderly relative’s up to this time?”

  “Just an after-supper stroll. She’ll be alright.” Unless she slips and falls into the river. Or picks a fight with a bobcat. Or … Moon smiled at himself. I’m getting to be a first-rate worrier. Which defect needed amending. Shifting gears, he addressed his guest. “Would you like to talk about what I didn’t find out when I called all the local plumbers?”

  “No thank you.” The dyspeptic cop rolled onto his left side. “This couch is comfortable as a wagonload of baby-duck feathers. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll sleep right here tonight.”

  “Anywhere you like, pardner.”

  Moon watched a flat-black Butch Cassidy cutout slip out of the back door of the bunkhouse and blend with the other nighttime shadows. With Butch on the job, Daisy’ll be safe as a baby in its mother’s arms.

  The darkness was just right for a snooze, the couch comfy-cozy, Moon’s office dead quiet. And Scott Parris was wide awake as a ten-year-old boy who’d drunk a quart of cowboy coffee. I might as well get this over with. He groaned. “Go ahead. Ruin my nap.”

  “You remember how Wanda Naranjo told us she’d called a plumber to fix that leak under her kitchen sink?”

  “Sure I do. But the guy never showed and you ended up doing the job yourself. So what?”

  “Well, I got to wondering which plumber she’d called.”

  “Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  And I’m just suspicious. “So what’d you find out?”

  “None of the mechanical contractors in Granite Creek admitted to getting a trouble call from Mrs. Naranjo to fix a leak—or for any other plumbing problem you can think of. Not on the Friday morning when her daughter disappeared, or anytime before or after that.”

  “Big surprise.” Parris snorted. “The one that took the call didn’t want to admit to being a few days overdue.”

  “I expect you’re right about that.” Moon turned to gaze out the office window, filling his eyes with darkness. “But when a plumber don’t answer a trouble call, there’s got to be a reason.”

  “No there don’t,” Parris grumped. “Plumbers are like cops; they don’t need any reason at all to be somewhere else when you need ’em.” He grinned. “Maybe he stopped at a doughnut shop.”

  The Indian’s silence was an eloquent response.

  “Dammit, Charlie!” There was a creak from the couch as Parris grunted himself into a seated position, a double-clunk as his Roper boot heels hit the hardwood floor. “So the plumber didn’t show—so what? Mix-ups like that happen every day of the week.”

  Moon turned on the lights.

  The lawmen exchanged squints.

  The rancher seated himself behind his desk. “Maybe the plumber almost showed up.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Let’s say he turned off the paved road into that long dirt lane that dead-ends at Mrs. Naranjo’s residence—but he never got as far as her home.” Three heartbeats. “It was getting dark about the time Betty Naranjo left the house. That big thunderstorm was rolling off the mountains and a fella might run his truck smack into a careless coyote or a startled mule deer … or a sixteen-year-old girl … without knowing what he’d hit.”

  “Hell’s bells.” Parris gazed at his scuffed boots. “But if the plumber run Betty Naranjo down on the lane, why didn’t we find her there—” He blinked. “Oh, right. He hauled her away.”

  “It would explain everything, pard.”

  The white cop aimed a doubtful gaze at the Ute’s dark face. “What do you mean … everything?”

  “The girl walked away on a Friday morning. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the cemetery custodian was found dead in his residence on the following Sunday morning.”

  Parris strained to make some sense of what his inscrutable Indian friend was saying. When the epiphany occurred, it was like a hard slap in the face. Ohmygosh. “You telling me the plumber—or somebody—was burying Betty Naranjo in the cemetery on Saturday night and that Morris Meusser heard something and…”

  “It fits. Somebody’s busy concealing a fresh corpse under the sod, Mr. Meusser hears something, goes to find out what’s going down—and gets killed for his trouble.”

  The chief of police nodded his balding head. “Just for the sake of aggravating me, let’s assume you’re right. After the no-show plumber murders Meusser, he takes his body back to the custodian’s quarters and … But how does he manage that?” A furrowed brow. “I’d sure hate to have a rasslin’ match with the hardcase who could throw Meusser over his shoulder and carry him all the way back to his house.”

  Moon had already considered that objection. “Try this on for size: Meusser shows up on his electric utility truck. The guy who whacks him uses that convenient motorized transport to haul Meusser’s body back to the custodian’s residence.”

  Parris was beginning to see the sense in Moon’s hypothesis. “He took the dead man home so the police wouldn’t find out where the crime had occurred—and where Betty Naranjo’s body was buried.”

  “That’s the way I figure it, pard. He’d arrange things so it would look like Meusser had been murdered during a burglary. Laying the cemetery custodian’s corpse out on the couch made it look like the man had been caught napping and got bludgeoned to death. Then the killer takes the dead man’s pocket watch and cuts the phone line. After that, he probably walked back to the grave site and f
inished the burial Meusser had interrupted.”

  “Yeah.” The white cop’s stomach was beginning to churn. “And he’d do his best to make the new grave look like undisturbed ground.” Scott Parris got to his feet and began to pace back and forth across Moon’s upstairs office. “But who is this guy? We must have at least a dozen plumbers in Granite Creek.”

  “There are five mechanical contractors listed in the Yellow Pages,” Moon said. “And most of those licensed plumbers have two or three employees who handle the small jobs.”

  “We could interview all of ’em, but nobody who’s guilty of two homicides is going to admit to anything.” Parris paused to direct a hopeful look at his deputy. “With a little luck, there might be a paper trail, like a work order.”

  “There might.” The Ute shook his head. “But I wouldn’t lay a two-bit bet on it.”

  Moon’s best friend shook his head and began pacing again. “If it went down like you say, we’ve got a hundred-acre cemetery to search for signs a recent unauthorized burial.”

  “That’s about the size of it.” Charlie Moon added, “And maybe twenty acres of that hundred are the old cemetery.”

  “Which is a Colorado historical site that’s protected by state law,” Parris grumbled. Not being an accomplished multitasker, the lawman paused his pacing to scratch at an itchy bristle of beard sprouting on his chin. “Without some solid evidence to support your theory, there’s no way our gutless DA would get me a court order to dig anywhere I want to in Granite Creek Cemetery.”

  Charlie Moon wasn’t about to give up. “Before you ask for permission to excavate, we could use dogs to search for a fresh burial site.” On more than one occasion, Sidewinder had sniffed out a corpse. “There’s bound to be some clothing in Betty Naranjo’s bedroom for the bloodhounds to sniff.”

  “Sure. But unless Wanda comes home and gives us permission, getting samples of her daughter’s clothes would also require a warrant, which I might be able to get if I could convince Pug there’s a good chance you’re onto something—and that he’ll look like a prize dope if he don’t help.” Parris jammed his big hands into his jacket pockets. The public servant figured most of his county-employee colleagues for grafters, parasites, and other lower forms of life, but the district attorney was the worst of the lot. Pug Bullet ought to be strung up to the nearest cottonwood till he’s stone-cold dead, shot six times in the head just to make sure—and then run outta town. He restarted his pacing. “I don’t know. From a strictly legal-beagle point of view, this whole notion of yours seems pretty thin.”

  “I’m inclined to agree.” Moon leaned back in his chair. “But seeing as how I’m just a lowly paid part-time deputy, the decision to act on it ain’t up to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Charlie. If there was just something more to go on…”

  Moon’s left eye twinkled. “How about the identity of the no-show plumber?”

  The chief of police stopped in his tracks. “You’re kidding me.”

  The jokester—who was notorious for having fun with his best friend—denied this frivolous charge.

  “Okay, wise guy—tell me Mr. Pipe-wrench’s name.”

  “I’d rather give you a hint.” Moon paused for dramatic effect. “After I fixed that leak for Mrs. Naranjo, d’you recall what the grateful señorita said to me?”

  “Not offhand.” Parris produced a snort of the derisive sort. “But I’ll bet you do.”

  “A man tends to treasure the occasional compliment he gets from the ladies.” The Ute grinned. “She said … ‘You’re a sure enough handyman.’”

  Scott Parris stared at his part-time deputy with a tinge of envy. Ol’ Charlie Moon don’t miss a trick. “Wanda can’t afford a licensed plumber, so she called somebody who’d do the job on the cheap.”

  The tribal investigator’s face was set like flint. “And we know who that was.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  DAISY WALKS THE DOG

  There they go—Charlie Moon’s aged auntie stepping sprightly like a lady who knows where she’s going and aims to get there right now—Sidewinder zigzagging a circuitous route to sniff out any appalling delicacy that might appeal to a canine’s inquisitive nose. Let it be duly noted that this was not a night for fainthearted folk to be out and strolling about; the darkness seemed filled to the brim with nameless horrors. Passing unscathed through malignant shadows where they barely escaped being snatched by a gruesome twosome of hideous stump-hobgoblins, the pair was immediately embraced in the suffocating night shade cast by long, leafy arms slyly posing as innocent cottonwood branches. Gnarled woody fingers reached out to entangle and strangle the warm-blooded creatures—and suck their veins dry to the last drop!

  A bit overdone, but an impressive horror show for a production improvised right on the spot by an ambitious company of local thespians. It seems a pity that neither Daisy nor Sidewinder took the least notice of the lurid drama.

  The woman stopped a few paces short of the junction where Too Late Creek spilled over a cluster of granite boulders to join forces with the rocky river that was the pride and lifeblood of the Columbine. Having arrived at the pebbled riverbank, the hound looked back expectantly, hoping that the elderly human biped would wade the water to the yonder side. For what possible purpose would Daisy do such a thing? Why, to climb Pine Knob to the top, throw her head back—and howl at the moon.

  Reading only the “wade the water” portion of the message in the dog’s shining eyes, Daisy explained, “The river’s thirty degrees too cold and I’m forty years too old.” Nevertheless, the far bank did call to the weary old soul. The eldest member of her tribe knew that before many more winters had passed, she would be obliged to cross that ultimate River. But that day would come when it may; what concerned her now was the business at hand. I might as well start telling my secrets to this floppy-eared mutt.

  TALKING TO THE DOG

  We know that practically everyone speaks to animals whenever the opportunity arises and Daisy Perika was not an exception. During her long and fascinating life, the woman had conversed with almost every living creature she’d come across, from A to Z—which is to say from pronghorn Antelopes (which are exceedingly taciturn) to Zenaida asiatica (which are white-winged doves). For one of such immense experience, talking to a dog would be as easy as falling off a slippery log. Buoyed by these advantages, the storyteller warmed up her audience by telling Charlie Moon’s dour hound a joke that everyone knows—that old rib-tickler about a Ute child, a Navaho elder, and an Apache medicine man—all fishing from the same canoe for channel catfish. (For those who may have forgotten, the funny part had to do with their choice of baits.) Alas, during Daisy’s expert build-up, Sidewinder’s attention was diverted by the fragrant odor of a specimen of day-old bear scat. That was bad enough, but just as she delivered the hilarious punch line, the dog opened his mouth wide and—yawned.

  Was Daisy Perika dismayed? At the very least. Despite her best efforts, the stand-up comic had learned that directing a lively monolog to a dog is not all that it’s cracked up to be. Is she about to give up the effort? Perish the negative thought. Far from tossing in the towel, Miss Daisy has decided to try a different approach. She will conduct a conversation with the rude beast.

  Yes, a conversation. The frustrated raconteur has a tale that is just aching be told, and to an audience who will respond with encouraging comments and well-deserved praise. How will she manage a stimulating verbal exchange with an animal who does not qualify even as a polite listener? Why, by imagining Sidewinder’s likely responses—were the ungainly beast equipped with a human voice and a brain bigger than a baby midget’s fist.

  Daisy may come up with an odd notions now and again, but the lady is no quitter.

  Before getting to the heart of her narrative, she commenced with a short story that might appropriately be titled “Sarah Frank and the Owl Feather,” with the somewhat wordy subtitle “How the Silly Ute-Papago Orphan Stole Daisy’s Ghost-Eyes a Couple of Weeks Ago, and H
ow—Not Half an Hour Ago—the Clever Tribal Elder Reversed the Process and Recovered Her Ability to See Dead People.”

  She wound up the self-aggrandizing yarn by addressing her canine companion in this manner: “I told you about that owl-feather business because it’s all tangled up with what’s been going on in Granite Creek Cemetery.”

  Sidewinder: Very interesting. It was apparent from this remark and the inquisitive glint in his eyes that the official Columbine hound was eager to hear more.

  Just as eager to tell him, Daisy described the gist of Sarah Frank’s encounter with the fellow who called himself Captain Erasmus Boyle, and the ensuing mystery about the man’s actual identity—and his intentions.

  Sidewinder spoke without moving his lips. That’s a real head scratcher—wondering how it’ll all turn out is likely to keep me awake all night.

  “That was just for starters, fuzz-face.” Daisy Perika’s mouth curled into a self-satisfied smirk. “The really good stuff’ll make your floppy ears stand straight up and your droopy old tail twist into a corkscrew!”

  If the hound harbored any disdain for the shameless utterance of such blatant hyperbole, his somber expression did not—

  (To be continued following some fast-breaking news.)

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  THE FAST-BREAKING NEWS

  Scott Parris was not 100 percent convinced that Charlie Moon was on the right track. But Professor Experience was the teacher Parris leaned on, and the lesson he’d learned was not to dismiss the tribal investigator’s hunches lightly. When ol’ Charlie takes a shot in the dark, he generally nails the bull’s-eye dead center. The white cop plopped onto the leather couch and heaved a heavy sigh. “Okay, Chucky. Just to make you happy, I’ll drop by and see the potential suspect tomorrow morning.” And if Mr. Fixit has had a hand in this awful mess, I’ll damn well find out.