The Tamarack Murders

by Patrick F. McManus

  Gridley looked at his watch. “Oh, no! I’m late. I’ve got somebody I have to meet. You fellows help the sheriff out with anything he wants to know, but I have to run.”

  Tully said, “Thanks for the help, Grid. It is getting late. But we’ve got our breakfasts coming. I guess we’ll have to share yours.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Dance said.

  “Me too,” Beeker added. “I’m starving. You’re sure this is on the county, Sheriff?”

  “Indeed it is, Horace. It’s the county’s pleasure. If there’s one thing Blight County loves, it’s hunters. Everyone here hunts. I’m even a bit of a hunter myself. Every fall I fill my freezer up with venison. In recent years, it’s been mostly filled up by the generosity of my deputies. I give them time off to hunt. How long have you fellows been hunting elk?”

  “Years and years,” Beeker said. “Ever since we was kids.”

  “Mostly big game?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Dance said. “We love hunting big game.”

  Tully thought the cafe’s hash browns and scrambled eggs were about the best he’d ever eaten. When they had cleaned all four plates, Dance said, “I guess we better head back to our cabin. Be four in the morning before we get there, so I guess we’ll sleep in. Thanks much for the whisky and breakfast, Sheriff. I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Tully said. “It’s on the county.” He glanced at his wristwatch. Eleven o’clock. “You fellas going to stick around for a while? With this cold weather blowing in, the elk hunting will pick up.”

  “Oh, yeah, we’ll stick around,” Dance said. “We have a week, maybe more”

  They walked outside.

  “Hope you get an elk,” Tully said. He thought it was highly unlikely, though. If hunters can’t tell a herd of deer from a herd of elk, their chances aren’t that good. He stopped suddenly. “Oh, oh,” he said. “I have to go back. I forgot to leave a tip for the waiter. The poor devil probably needs it, too.”

  “See you around, Sheriff,” Beeker said. They went off down the street.

  Tully walked back into the cafe. The waiter was clearing off their table and putting the dishes into a blue plastic dishpan. “Just leave the dishpan and everything else right where it is,” he told the waiter. The man straightened and stared at him. Tully took out his badge and showed it to him. Then he took out his pocket notebook and opened it to two blank pages. “Press the fingers of your left hand on the left page and the fingers of your right hand onto the right page.”

  The waiter did as he was told.

  “How’d you guess I done time, Sheriff? The tattoos?”

  “Naw. Would you take a crappy job like this if you hadn’t?”

  “Good point. Just for your information, Sheriff, I’ve been clean ever since I got out.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Now sign your name on the bottom of each page with your prints. I just want to distinguish them from those of my friends.”

  “You’re some kind of friend, Sheriff.”

  “Aren’t I though?” He pulled a roll of cash out of a pants pocket and thumbed through it until he found five twenties. He gave them to the waiter. The man almost fainted.

  Tully stepped to the door and looked down the street. Beeker and Dance were nowhere in sight. “Listen to me now,” he told the waiter. “I want you to leave the dishpan, dishes, and silverware right where they are. I’ll drive up out front in a few minutes and come in and get them. You make up your own mind if you want to share your tip with the owner as rental for his dishpan and contents.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Tully walked the four blocks down the street to where he had parked his Explorer. Pugh leaned against it.

  “You get the license plate on my friends’ vehicle?”

  Pugh handed him a slip of paper. “Right here, boss. I drove along after them for about a mile, until they took the Old River Road to Famine.”

  Tully studied the information. “So they’re driving a late model Land Rover. Pretty ritzy. Oregon, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Trailer hitch?”

  “No. I think it’s mostly their town car. It’s all polished up. I doubt it’s ever been off pavement. The River Road will be a new experience for it. Maybe they want to avoid driving through Famine. You know, there’s plenty of good elk hunting in Oregon. Funny they’d drive all the way to Blight County for elk.”

  “Be interesting to see if they bought out-of-state licenses to hunt in Idaho. Must have cost them a fortune. If they’re driving a new Land Rover, I guess at least one of them can afford it. Oh, one more thing, Brian.”

  “Right, boss, I’ll check with Fish and Game tomorrow to see what kind of licenses they bought, if any, and what addresses they used.”

  Tully smiled. “You’re always one step ahead of me, Pugh. By the way, the names I got are Horace Beeker and Ed Dance.”

  Driving out to his house, Tully did a lot of thinking about Dance and Beeker. He didn’t want them leaving the county without his knowing it. Hunters who can’t tell elk from deer are always worth keeping an eye on. Suddenly, he hit the brakes and made a U-turn on the highway. It had just occurred to him there was something else he had intended to check.

  He drove back to town and cruised quietly past 1204 West Hemlock. The house was dark. He drove to the end of the block and came back through the alley. A small garage sat off to one side of the alley behind the Stone’s house. The rear end of a bright red car protruded far enough out that the garage doors couldn’t close. It was only the second time in recent years Tully had seen tail fins.

  The plot thickens, he thought. Grid lets two guys hunt his property who saw deer instead of elk. The flagging tape marking the place where the getaway car turned into the ditch has Grid’s fingerprint on it. Now Grid is spending the night with the widow of the man shot on the mountain, a man suspected of being a bank robber. The shooter makes his escape on an ATV on the other side of the ridge. Grid has an ATV. He has a rack full of guns in his house and is an excellent shot. He has a pickup parked out in his woods with two bales of hay in it. The pickup parked on the road after the robbery had two bales of hay in it. Everything about this robbery had been arranged by someone very crafty. Grid is as crafty a man as he’s ever met. He would have to take closer look at him. He wouldn’t even mind taking a closer look at his wife.

  Chapter 8

  It was almost three when he started down the dirt road that sloped across the meadow to his log house. He and his wife, Ginger, had built the house themselves with logs from trees they had cut off their own land. The land had been a gift from a corrupt and violent old man, but enough about his father. Tully still appreciated his generosity. Building the house with Ginger had been the best time of his life. Ginger hadn’t remembered it that way, but women tended to be so prissy when it came to wrestling logs.

  Halfway across the meadow he braked to a stop and peered at the house. The living-room light was on. It hadn’t been on when he left that morning. At least he couldn’t believe he had left the light on. He turned off the Explorer’s headlights, coasted down to the front of the house, and stopped. He unsnapped the retaining strap that held his Colt Commander in his shoulder holster and pulled the gun out. He opened the car door, got out, and pressed the door shut. Walking on the tips of his boots across the porch, he ever so carefully turned the knob on the front door with his left hand, the Colt Commander pointing straight up in his right, his finger on the trigger. He stepped in.

  Daisy was asleep on the couch, a blanket spread over her. His watchdog, Clarence, was asleep on a pillow next to her, his head resting on her hip.

  Tully tiptoed over to his bedroom, undressed, put on sweat shirt and sweat pants, and went to bed. He wasn’t worried about burglars breaking in. His former watchdog was back. He had no idea how or why Clarence had suddenly returned. He had given him to a friend months ago. Well, not exactly a friend, but a person willing to
accept Clarence. He guessed that anybody willing to accept Clarence had to be regarded as a friend. And now the miserable little beast was back.

  Tully awoke to the racket of a large spoon beating on a metal pan.

  “It’s almost seven o’clock!” Daisy yelled. “Time a hard-working sheriff should be out of bed!”

  Tully groaned, got up, and wandered out to the kitchen in his mismatched sweatshirt and sweatpants. Breakfast was on the table. Huckleberry pancakes and sausage links! He supposed Daisy wasn’t a totally evil person. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

  She laughed. “You look like something Clarence dragged in.”

  “If you’re referring to my watchdog, Daisy, that’s pretty bad. What’s Clarence doing back? I thought I was rid of him for good. For that matter, what brings you out here?”

  “What do you suppose, Bo? I was lonely and needed some company. All I found was Clarence sitting in a car with a dreadful old man.”

  Tully frowned and shook his head. “Batim Scragg! Daisy, he is so much worse than a dreadful old man. He is possibly the deadliest human being on the planet, if I exclude my father. Did Batim say why he was returning Clarence? I liked to think of them as two peas in a pod.”

  “He said Clarence kept chomping his chickens.”

  Clarence had climbed up on a chair at the end of the table and was staring at Tully, a questioning look in his eyes.

  Tully stared back at him. “Oh, it’s all right, Clarence. You can stay. But Daisy owes me big time.”

  Clarence’s tail began to wag.

  Daisy said, “I should think huckleberry pancakes would make us even for my rescuing your cute little dog.”

  “Not by a long shot, sweetheart. A down payment does occur to me, however.”

  Tully and Daisy’s affair had ended months earlier, but neither of them had quite gotten over it. He got up, walked over, and gave her a quick smooch. “That’s for the huckleberry pancakes. By the way, where did you find the huckleberries?”

  “Your stash in the cellar. I used the ones from the freezer, but I noticed you canned some too. You’re quite the handy guy, you know that, Bo? You’d make somebody a good wife.”

  “Thanks. I’ll have to think about that. Actually, it was Rose who canned the huckleberries.”

  “Old as you are, you still have your momma looking after you.”

  “Yeah, and for a nosy old broad she does pretty well by me in the way of food.”

  Tully sat back down and sampled a pancake. “Hey, not bad, Daisy. You’d make somebody a pretty good wife yourself.”

  Daisy laughed. “Yeah, right! You had your chance, Bo, and you blew it.”

  “I thought you were the one who blew it?”

  “No, it was you.”

  “Well, in that case, I’m sorry. By the way, I do have some gossip, if you’re interested.”

  “I’m alway interested in gossip, Bo! Wait till I get a refill.”

  She grabbed the coffee pot off the stove and refilled both their cups. She replaced the coffee pot on the stove, sat back down at the table and folded her hands. “Now tell me! I love gossip.”

  Tully told her about seeing Grid’s car parked in the widow Danielle Stone’s garage.

  Daisy responded, appropriately, with a gasped expletive.

  Tully said, “Yeah, my word exactly. This adds a whole new dimension to the bank robbery and murder. I wouldn’t be surprised if Grid ended up with both the widow and the loot from the bank.”

  “It’s pretty cold blooded, Bo. You think Gridley Shanks is that cold blooded?”

  “I think Grid can be any way he wants to be. The nasty part of this, he has a beautiful wife, absolutely gorgeous, and two young kids that live with a former wife and her husband. The shooting took place on a piece of land he owns. So he knows the terrain out there. He has two so-called hunters on his property who can’t tell a herd of deer from a herd of elk. How they figure in, I don’t know. I thought I heard an ATV take off on the other side of the ridge after the shooting. I saw a four-wheel-drive ATV at Grid’s place. Suppose he has an affair going with Danielle Stone, Vergil’s wife. He not only masterminds a robbery and somehow ends up back at her house with the loot, he does away with his competition for Danielle, her desperate husband. How does that sound?”

  Daisy shook her head. “Pretty gruesome. You think this Grid is some kind of homicidal maniac?”

  “I have to admit he doesn’t seem like one. Maybe the secret to being a successful homicidal maniac is not to seem like one.”

  Daisy laughed. “Well, yeah, you go around acting like a homicidal maniac you’re not going to last very long.”

  “My point exactly,” Tully said.

  “Maybe he’s one of those weirdos who love to play dice with the devil. It gives him a rush and makes him feel smarter than everybody else.”

  Tully finished a huckleberry pancake and forked another onto his plate. “Good point. Maybe he figures I’ll take his accomplices down, and he’ll have the loot all to himself. I’ll go check with the FBI guys and see if they’ve turned up anything.”

  “Angie?”

  “No way. Notice I said guys.”

  He drove to the bank and parked at the edge of the shopping center’s lot. Angie was nowhere to be seen, but two other agents were talking to the bank manager outside the front door. The manager pointed to something out in the parking lot. Tully looked but saw only empty blacktop. Maybe that’s where the getaway car had been parked. The FBI could worry about the car and the robbery, he would worry about the man killed on the mountainside. Maybe Vergil was one of the robbers and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe the car in the ditch wasn’t the getaway car at all but only a car that looked like it. On the other hand, why was Vergil climbing the mountain if he wasn’t trying to get away from the getaway car? And if he was the robber, where was the loot? And why was he shot? No doubt to silence him about others involved in the heist. And to take his share of the loot. It all made his head spin.

  He walked over to the bank. The manager, Phil Estes, introduced him to the two agents. They shook hands.

  “So you’re the famous Sheriff Bo Tully of Blight County, Idaho,” the one named Mel Jaspers said. “I expected you to be at least nine feet tall.”

  “Usually I am,” Tully said, “but I’ve been feeling a little short the past few days. You fellas got the bank robbery solved yet?”

  Shaun Dugan, white-haired and obviously the older of the two agents, shook his head. “It appears the robbers had some inside information. They pulled the thing off with perfect timing.”

  Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache and thought for a moment. Then he said, “The chap gunned down up on Chimney Mountain worked for the bank until a while back. He may be the one who helped with the timing. So far, though, we haven’t found a penny of the loot.”

  “Good heavens!” the manager said. “You mean Vergil Stone! I can’t believe Vergil was involved, but it appears he was.”

  Jaspers said, “There’s a lot of loot to find. Shaun and I could retire and live in luxury on a Caribbean island, if we’d had the good sense to think of it. Apparently, the robbers made off with a bundle, actually a large garbage bag over half full.”

  The bank manager said, “Yeah, they made a big haul. It’ll take us several days to figure out exactly how much.”

  Tully said, “Wow, if I’d known you had that much cash lying around, Phil . . .”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean, Bo. We’ve never had a robbery before and didn’t think much about having one. The reason we had so much cash on hand, loggers like it for pay day. A week later the robbers would have got some, all right, but not the big haul they did.”

  Jaspers said, “It’s pretty obvious they had inside information.”

  “Yeah,” Tully said. “You need inside information for a haul like that. Makes a person think about taking up bank robbery as a sideline.”

  “It’s a pretty crowded field right now,” Jaspers said. “With the economy
down like it is, I doubt you’d find any openings, Bo.”

  Tully shook his head. “Just my luck. Alway a day late and a dollar short.”

  He told the agents he would see them later and then drove over to the courthouse and parked in the spot reserved for the sheriff. His three-thousand-dollar alligator-skin boots klocked nicely as he went up the stairs. A man who knows his boots notices such things. Boots were the only thing Tully splurged on. Anyone wearing boots that expensive instantly drew respect in Blight County. He had paid for them with money from the sale of one of his watercolors. That was the most he had ever been paid for one of his paintings and he knew, finally, that he could now make a living from his art, modest though it might be. The boots had earned him the respect of the county commissioners, even though they knew he hadn’t paid for them with graft. They may have been ignorant of the art world, but they understood graft. The holder of a public office never buys anything that showy and expensive with graft. It would set off alarms all over the place. Commissioners go around with holes in their jackets and the soles flopping on their old shoes. But as all the residents of Blight County knew most of their local politicians were corrupt. But they could be bought cheap. Even a poor person could own at least one. As long as the politicians kept themselves affordable, Blight citizens put up with them. The system worked, and nearly everybody was satisfied. It was the Blight way.

  When he got to the briefing room, all the deputies were out on patrol. Only Daisy, Lurch, Herb, and Florence were there, Herb reading his newspaper as usual, Daisy on the phone.

  “Why thank you, dear,” she said sweetly. “We always try to be of service in situations like this. You’re very welcome, dear.”

  She hung up the phone and shouted at Tully. “You volunteered me to do what! Sit all night with the grieving widow of a man who has just been murdered! Are you out of your mind, Bo?” She had inserted a popular expletive randomly throughout the diatribe.

  Tully shrugged and walked over to Lurch’s corner. “Find any info on Vergil Stone?”

  “Yeah, but nothing you don’t already know.”