by R. R. Irvine
Claire’s hometown, Moroni, was eight miles west, at the end of a thin black line labeled State Highway 116. He could be there in ten or fifteen minutes, looking for clues to where she’d hidden the boy. Or perhaps even a clue to Claire herself.
Traveler shook his head and refolded the road map. Whatever clues Claire had left behind could wait a while longer.
Another message was waiting for him outside Wasatch.
DOES YOUR HUSBAND
MISBEHAVE
GRUNT AND GRUMBLE
RANT AND RAVE
SHOOT THE BRUTE SOME
BURMA-SHAVE
Wasatch was a cul-de-sac at the end of a mile-long side road that terminated against the foothills. It had been settled twice, Traveler recalled from his father’s briefing, once by Brigham Young’s pioneers and again after Utah’s Indian wars. A city-limits sign gave the town’s population as 1,324.
Traveler rolled down the window, expecting the air to be cold from the snow-capped peaks of the Wasatch Plateau. Instead, the noontime air was hot enough to smell scorched.
The thought crossed his mind that he’d carried the forest fires south with him. But there was no sign of smoke, only blue sky and mountains. Probably he’d been smelling smoke all along and hadn’t noticed it.
No doubt the scent was clinging to his jeans or to the red flannel shirt that Martin had insisted on since deer hunting season was about to start.
Rows of columnlike poplar trees followed him along Main Street. So did nineteenth-century barns, hay derricks, and outhouses. When they gave out, irrigation ditches and sluice gates continued all the way to Brigham Street, where sidewalks and gutters marked the beginning of the business section.
A block beyond Brigham, at Kimball Street, he found the city hall. It was a square, two-story building with a flat roof and a limestone facade accentuated by rock-faced lintels, sills, and arched windows with projecting keystones. It also served as a fire station. No doubt Martin would have called it a fine example of the Victorian Revival style. Utah Gothic came to mind as Traveler climbed the outside wooden stairway to the sheriff’s office.
A weathered sign, hand lettered in black going on gray, hung from the lintel above the open door. It read
MAHONRI HICKMAN, SHERIFF.
Traveler knocked on the doorframe before entering. The room was small, with a single square window and a ceiling not much taller than Traveler. The walls were whitewashed, the planked floor deeply grooved and blackened by wear. A single wooden desk, fronted by two metal folding chairs, blocked the way to a squat doorway that probably led to a cell. A gunbelt hung on a peg beside the door.
The man sitting behind the desk stood up. He was small and wiry, about eighty pounds short of Traveler’s two hundred and twenty. He wore jeans and a light blue uniform shirt with navy blue collar tabs.
“I’m Sheriff Hickman. You must be the private detective.”
Small-town secrets were hard to keep, Traveler thought, handing over a photostat of his investigator’s license. Even so, he hadn’t expected instant recognition, especially when it came to something as sensitive as suicide.
The sheriff studied the photostat carefully, comparing the photo with real life. What hair Hickman had was concentrated in long, bushy sideburns that connected to an extravagant black mustache. He reminded Traveler of the faces in pioneer daguerreotypes.
He returned the ID and shook hands. “We’ve never had a private eye in Wasatch before. Not to my knowledge anyway. You being here puts us on the map, I guess. Sit down. We’d better talk before you start stirring up things around here.”
The metal chair groaned under Traveler’s weight.
“Let me tell you something about small towns,” Hickman said, smiling as if he’d already read Traveler’s mind on the subject. “I’ve lived my entire life in them. I was born in Manti myself, the best of the bunch as far as I’m concerned. While the rest of these towns shrink away to nothing, Manti endures. Of course, it’s a temple town. Brigham Young himself dedicated the temple site. As far as I’m concerned that makes Manti the capital of Sanpete County.”
The sheriff sat back, staring at Traveler over steepled fingers as if daring a challenge.
“I seem to remember that Ephraim’s the largest town,” Traveler said.
“Let me tell you about Ephraim. They don’t call it Little Denmark for nothing. Those people are still living like they did in the old country, backsliders who are too fond of their pipes and coffee and barley beer. Ignore the Word of Wisdom like that and God knows what comes next.”
“How did you end up in Wasatch?” Traveler asked, though what he really wanted to know was how the sheriff knew he was coming.
“I have one goal in life, Traveler, to be the sheriff of Manti. This is a first step only.”
The faded sign over the door had been there a long time, Traveler thought but didn’t say so. Hickman looked to be forty-five, maybe more. He’d have to hurry his career if he was going anywhere before retirement.
“Does the name Hickman mean anything to you?”
Traveler sat back, recognizing the question as rhetorical. He also recognized the name.
“Bill Hickman, the defender of the faith, was my great-grandfather. “
In the beginning, Traveler knew, Hickman had been one of Joseph Smith’s twelve bodyguards.
“Brigham Young personally rewarded Bill by appointing him a sheriff.”
He was also known as Brigham’s Destroying Angel, claiming to have committed murder in the name of the prophet.
“Bill was a saint.”
Brigham Young excommunicated him in the end.
“Mahonri Hickman will be a name to be reckoned with one day, too.” The sheriff leaned forward to solicit a response.
“Who told you I was coming?” Traveler said.
“Running you out of town might be a step in the right direction, considering the publicity it ought to generate.” The sheriff smiled and fingered his mustache like a cliché villain. “I figured someone like you’d be coming around when Ellis Nibley paid me a visit. Sat in the same chair you are not three days ago and asked my advice about hiring himself a big-city detective. He wouldn’t listen to me. I don’t suppose you will either?”
“I haven’t heard your advice yet.”
Hickman stood up and strapped on his gun, a .357 Magnum. “You’re a foot taller than I am, big man. But that doesn’t mean shit if push comes to shove. I want you to know that if the time arrives when I have to put you in your place.”
Hickman dropped back into his seat and stared Traveler in the eye. “We’re country folk around here. We go to church, pay our tithe, and mind our own business. That means we don’t go around asking questions about the dead. On top of which, you’re on a fool’s errand.”
“It won’t be my first.”
Hickman scowled. “The only crime committed was by Melba Nibley. A crime against God. So my advice to you is to get back in your car and go home.”
“Is that an order?”
The sheriff pulled the tip of his mustache hard enough to create a crooked smile. “As my illustrious ancestor always said, ‘It’s a free country.’ Free to be buried in.”
“Is that a threat?”
“All I’m saying is I don’t want you upsetting folks.”
“I suppose everyone in town already knows why I’m here?”
“Not unless Nibley told them.”
“Look, I’m here to help the man if I can.”
“How much do they pay you for that kind of work?”
“Not enough,” Traveler said, thinking of the refund his father had insisted upon.
Hickman sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Maybe I came on too strong there for a minute. But this thing’s damned near killed Ellis. Hell, maybe you being here will clear the air for him. I don’t know. I tried my best to help, but I couldn’t get through to him.”
“Tell me about the suicide,” Traveler said, “and I won’t have to bother anybod
y else for the details.”
Hickman chewed on his mustache for a moment. “Judging from what I read, women like to use pills. It’s not so messy.” He squinted at Traveler as if waiting for an argument. “Melba must have been saving them up, because Doctor Joe would never prescribe enough drugs to kill anybody. A great doctor as far as I’m concerned. Saving people was his life, so he sure as hell wouldn’t help them die.”
“What kind of pills?” Traveler asked.
“I don’t remember the technical name, but they were some kind of tranquilizer.”
“Did you see her suicide coming?”
“Melba Nibley was a good woman. She taught Sunday school. She was past president of the church’s Relief Society.”
“Do you have any doubt that it was suicide?”
“Come on. She left a note.”
“In her own hand?”
“You’re damn right. I’ve had it verified too.”
“Do you have any idea why she might have done it?” Traveler asked.
“If Ellis Nibley doesn’t know, who would?”
To give himself time to think, Traveler got up and stepped to the window. His father would have loved the Beaux Arts theater across the street. It was another example of Victorian excess, complete with Corinthian columns, Roman statuary, scrollwork cornices, and parapets worthy of a medieval castle. Faded letters on its marquee said CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. The announcement looked as if it had been there for years.
He took a deep breath. He was wasting his time in Wasatch; he’d known that from the start. There was nothing he could do to ease Ellis Nibley’s pain. Worse yet, Traveler’s presence would probably inflame wounds not yet healed.
“Where did you find the body?”
“Dressed in her Sunday best lying in her own bathtub. A practical woman, Melba Nibley. She knew about bodily fluids.”
“Is there anything else I ought to know?” Traveler asked, turning to face the sheriff again.
“Like what?”
Traveler waited, hoping silence would elicit something more. But Hickman pursed his lips inward so hard they disappeared inside his mustache.
“I’d like to talk to some local people,” Traveler said finally. “To earn my keep.”
“Don’t I count?”
“I was thinking of Mrs. Nibley’s friends.”
“You won’t find people home this time of day, not in Wasatch. The best time to catch folks is supper-time, right after sundown. Don’t be late, though. We go to bed early around here.”
Sheriff Hickman folded his arms over his chest. “It’s Monday night, you know.”
To Mormons, Monday nights were known as Family Home Evenings, traditionally a time to gather together for prayer and songs, though television had taken its toll.
“I’ll try them at work,” Traveler said. “Starting with Shirley Colton if you’d help me find her.”
“She’ll be at the post office. It’s also our hardware store. It’s just up Main Street, a coupla doors this side of Pratt Road. You can’t miss it. The fact is, I’ll give them a call and let them know you’re coming.”
“Advance warning is never a good idea in my business.”
Hickman smiled. “Have you got a place to stay in town?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll call the Beasleys at the Sleep-Well Motel.”
“I passed the Uinta Hotel on Main Street. It looked okay.”
Hickman dismissed the hotel with a wave of his hand. “When the word gets around that you’re a detective—a Gentile at that, I figure—and that you’re poking your nose into Melba Nibley’s suicide, you’ll have to drive all the way to Ephraim to get yourself a room. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”
“Where do I find the motel?”
“Go back down Main toward the highway. When you come to Cannon Street take a left. The Sleep-Well’s a couple of blocks after that, right on Cowdery Creek. It’s a nice spot.”
Traveler started to leave.
“If you ask me,” the sheriff called after him, “it’s a waste of time you being here. Nobody in Wasatch is going to talk to someone like you.”
7
“IT’S ABOUT time you got here,” Shirley Colton said the moment Traveler introduced himself. She came out from behind a wall of post office pigeonholes and led him into a corner of the hardware store well away from the front door. “I just now overheard my husband on the phone with Sheriff Hickman. There was mention of some kind of investigator being here in town. That must be you.”
She was a small woman with a pale face full of freckles about to make the transition to age spots. COLTON’S, stitched in dark brown script, ran across the breast pocket of her tan smock.
“Lord knows we’ve been waiting long enough for you to get around to us,” she went on. “I guess we should thank God you got here at all.”
Traveler smiled to cover his surprise but kept his mouth shut. In his business, silence was golden as long as other people wanted to talk.
“We can’t speak here for long,” she said softly. “Not in front of everybody.” She glanced toward the rear of the hardware store, where a heavyset man in a matching smock was helping a lady customer and trying to watch Traveler at the same time. The place smelled of sawdust and glue. Its well-worn wooden floor had grooved paths down aisles that led to nail bins and racks of garden tools.
She raised her voice. “Lew, you man the cash register while I show our guest around town.” She emphasized the word guest, probably for the customer’s benefit. “We shouldn’t be too long.”
Before they could leave, another customer, a middle-aged man with dark crew-cut hair and rimless no-nonsense glasses, entered the store.
“Afternoon, Nat. May I help you?”
“I dropped in to get some nails.”
“You don’t mind if I wait on a customer, do you, Mr. Traveler? Now, Nat, what exactly do you need?”
The customer patted the pocket of his gray overalls as if searching for a sample. But he was watching Traveler out of the corner of his eye. “I’d better talk that over with your husband.”
She sighed. “I’ve been working this place with him for fifteen years, Nat.”
He smiled condescendingly and moved toward the back of the store.
“Men,” she breathed, not for Traveler’s benefit but her own.
Silently, Traveler followed her outside onto the sidewalk. Seen from there, Colton Hardware was one of those streamlined buildings from the thirties. Art Moderne it was called, if Traveler remembered correctly, with rounded corners, curved glass, and a flat roof that left all the vents and stovepipes exposed. Compared to its nineteenth-century surroundings, it could have been an alien spaceship.
She paused to look up and down Main. There weren’t more than half a dozen people on the street. Four of them were loitering in front of the Main Street Dinette across the way.
“I suppose we could get a cup of coffee,” She accentuated “coffee” the same way she had “guest” to let him know that she followed WOW, the Word of Wisdom against the sin of caffeine.
“Not for me,” he said. The dinette had a sign out front that said MOM’S HOME COOKING. His own mother’s home cooking had run to parsnip pancakes saturated with Crisco.
Shirley Colton nodded and turned east on Main Street, toward the Wasatch Mountains. It was hot for so late in the afternoon, ninety at least. The air smelled faintly of scorched asphalt.
She didn’t speak again until they’d reached the corner and turned left on Pratt Road. “It’s been months since a bunch of us got together and wrote to the state board. We’d given you up for a lost cause.”
She was mistaking him for someone else, he thought. That didn’t stop him from prompting her with a nod. Her face, he realized, had reddened considerably since he’d first met her.
“If you ask me,” she continued, “you coming around here now is too late. It’s like locking the barn door after the cows have escaped.”
He didn’t know wh
at she was getting at. But whatever it was, it had put her face into full blush.
The business district ended one block north of Main Street, where Ridgon Avenue crossed Pratt. Shirley Colton stopped at the intersection, looking carefully both ways, before crossing the road into the residential area. There wasn’t a car moving anywhere.
Head down, she stepped off the curb brusquely and walked staring at her feet, ignoring the neighborhood of Hoover bungalows.
“I don’t understand,” he ventured.
“Now that you’re here, we won’t stand for a whitewashing. You can be sure of that.” She stopped walking to confront him. Her face was redder than ever, yet now she was looking him in the eye, with anger overcoming her shyness. “How many women have to pay the price before you people do something? How long before you stop protecting your own even when they’re guilty?”
Careful, he reminded himself. Don’t lie but don’t give anything away either. “You’ve got to bear with me, ma’am. I was just brought into the case.”
“Why now? Why not sooner, before someone had to die?”
She was glaring at him, hands on hips, demanding an answer.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Colton. I can’t comment on an investigation in progress.”
She began walking again, catching him by surprise and forcing him to trot to catch up. He was sweating. She was hugging herself against some kind of inner chill.
A block later, they crossed Almon Avenue and the houses changed from one century to another, with single-story bungalows giving way to the taller Victorians.
She didn’t speak again until they reached Heber Street. “If you try sweeping this under the rug, Mr. Traveler, you and your kind are going to find yourselves in trouble. Even at this late date, we’re prepared to go as far as need be to get satisfaction.” She turned away from him to point across the street. “Do you see that house?”
It was one of those small, two-story Victorians masquerading as a mansion, with a rock-faced facade that reminded him of a dungeon. Yellowed Venetian blinds screened the windows and gave the place an abandoned look.
