E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  No answer. Alma was screaming, “Mother! Where are you? Someone look for her!”

  * * * *

  There was a rush of spectators, some braving the heat to look in the tank house, others to the eucalyptus grove, to which Agard and Carmody took Virgil Bean. While moving an injured man is bad business, the heat made it necessary.

  And he saw that he had been wrong in moving the man. Another gesture of protest, a mutter, and Bean conked out.

  They could not find Alma’s mother. Carmody had an idea, but he kept it to himself. Some of the searchers were returning, looking rather sick. “Get that girl away!” Carmody commanded.

  The breeze shifted. The odor of burning flesh confirmed his guess. He was glad when the ambulance and the sheriff’s deputies arrived.

  Bean’s own axe had felled him. The initials stenciled on the helve clinched that.

  There were no fingerprints, just a smudge. According to the interne who took over, Bean had been hacked down some three hours before Carmody’s arrival with Alma: this opinion was based on the condition of the wounds, and of the blood on the weapon. The fire, however, had roared up suddenly, explosively. Agard, the prune pickers, and the other near neighbors had apparently noticed it at about the same time.

  Very oddly, not one of the axe blows had cut in as deeply as it should have.

  Even a light smack would normally split the toughest skull.

  Questioning neighbors and prune pickers was an all day job, and Carmody, just for a change, was at the receiving end. The Mexicans and Okies, on the defensive, made the most of Virgil Bean’s last words.

  Two deputies went to Agard’s place. The hatchet-faced one, Hapgood, stayed for further talk with Carmody. “So you’re Honest John, huh? I heard of you. What’s the Honest mean, dumb or crooked?”

  “If it meant either, every cop in the country’d spell his name with an ‘H’, including you.”

  Hapgood grinned. “All right, I spell mine with an ‘H’! Everyone heard Bean say to you and Agard, so you come back to finish me. And we’d like to know which one he meant.”

  “Quit horsing around. Where do I stand? Either you mean it, or you don’t.”

  Hapgood lit a cigarette. “I am just glad old man Bean wasn’t looking at me when he sounded off his last will and testament.”

  Then the other deputies brought Agard from across the street, and headed for the car.

  He was handcuffed. That quarrel had done the job up brown.

  Late that afternoon, when the ruins had cooled, they found what remained of Mrs. Bean. There was a shattered gallon jug, and a distinct trace of gasoline odor. She had been shot to death with a .32-20 Winchester. A neighbor, looking at the metal parts fished from the debris near the back door, said that the weapon was Bean’s.

  Having gone to bat for Agard in the matter of prunes, Carmody could not dump the old man now; and the recollection of Alma’s face, when she saw what happened, forced him to action.

  Honest John went to the county jug, to take Agard a plug of chewing tobacco. The old man said smoking was a silly habit, but that chewing was good for the teeth.

  “Pop, who’s your lawyer?”

  “You think I’m going to have a mortgage on my place the rest of my life?” the Swede flared up. “Look how they hooked—”

  “A lawyer won’t necessarily—”

  But Agard shouted him down: “It is a hell of a note when an innocent man has to prove he’s not guilty, lawyers are to protect crooks, you understand?”

  There are times when you can’t argue with a Scandinavian, and this was one of them, yet Carmody made another attempt: “But why’s Bean say, you come back to finish me? Pop, this ain’t play.”

  “You talk like a cop.”

  “Well, I used to be one. Maybe I can help you.”

  Agard mulled this over. “All right, stay at the house, save tourist court rent, and take care of those prunes.”

  “Haven’t you got any alibi?”

  The Swede’s jaw clamped on the plug of tobacco. “Hell, no. That proves I’m innocent, only crooks have alibis.”

  Carmody groaned, “Oh, what a client!”

  “Son, if you were any kind of detective, you’d be detecting, you’d not be out here working.” Then, grinning amiably. “And quit calling me Pop, I’m not so old. Going to tend those prunes?”

  “They’re about all I can salvage, the way you cut up!”

  As he headed for the Sinclair, where Alma had dug in to get away from sympathetic and curious neighbors, Honest John began to wonder about Agard. Maybe the old fox was betting on his age to influence a jury, and never mind arguments.

  Alma had done a better job of pulling herself together than he had expected, though her eyes told him that shock still kept her from knowing how badly she had been hurt.

  “If you ask me any questions, I’ll go wild!”

  The room was cluttered with dress shop boxes. Every stitch she owned, except the clothes she’d worn from the cannery, had been burned. She saw his glance take in the display, and went on, “I hated shopping, but I had to.”

  “And I hate to butt in like this, but I have to.”

  “Why? Haven’t I answered enough questions today?”

  “Do you believe Gunnar Agard really did it?”

  Alma passed her hand over her eyes. “I can’t even believe it happened. Oh, go home! I know you mean well, but do go! Please!”

  Unless Alma played ball, Carmody was stumped. “I’m representing Agard,” he declared, gruffly, “and they’re not going to railroad him. Who are you covering?”

  She jerked back as though he had slapped her. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve worked on these apple knocker cases before. You folks are all rooted in the earth, you’re afraid of making enemies in the neighborhood, so you all dummy up. Your father had no enemies, not at all, so all of a sudden some one flings a gallon of gas into the bedroom, chops your dad down when he comes running out, and then—”

  “Will you get out! Before I call—”

  She snatched the phone. Honest John twisted it from her grasp, and caught her wrists. He said, gently, “You think you don’t want this cleared up, but you really do.” He edged her toward a chair, patted her shoulders, and after a moment, when she seated herself, he continued, “Was there any jealousy around the house? Some romance stuff? It happens, you know.”

  He barely kept her from bouncing to her feet. “Why, you—you dirty bum! If you mean mother and Gunnar Agard—”

  Honest John blinked, and put on the dumb look which had won him his handle, years previous. It worked again: Alma relaxed. “Oh, I know, detectives can’t get out of such ways of thinking, you meet so many awful people.”

  He went on with his whipsawing: “Your husband was in town last night, you as much as said he tried to sell you the idea of going back to him.”

  “Well, what of it?”

  A bit more bluff: “If it wasn’t so easy for you to go home, maybe you’d go back to him. Your folks didn’t think much of him.”

  Alma flared up, “The only difference between you and the police is, they’re twisting everything to fit Gunnar Agard, you’re twisting things to fit Orrin!”

  “One of the neighbor kids picking prunes told me how your dad run Orrin Elwell off the place account of loafing and borrowing dough from him. Heck, it’s no secret, your trying to stick and them talking you into your senses.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’d do such a horrible thing. Any of the pickers might’ve done it. Wrangling about pay, or working conditions, or just plain robbery.”

  “Where’d you and Orrin go, that night?”

  “We ate at Latour’s, on Fountain Alley, and he asked me to go out to Coyote with him; he lives above the Eldorado Bar, where he works; it was his night off.”

  “What’d he
do after you went to work?”

  She said triumphantly, “I was late, he got the last southbound bus at eleven, I took a cab to the cannery, and did I have a time finding one! And you can check all that.”

  “He should’ve been with a strange woman. A wife can’t testify against her husband, and her testimony for him doesn’t pack much weight.”

  “Well, ask the bus driver, ask the waiter! Ask the cab driver! And now get out, leave me alone!”

  The cops had all the evidence. Honest John’s only chance was his old stand-by, “Keep ’em irritated.” When people get griped enough, they blow up. And so, instead of heading back to the Agard farm, he drove to Coyote, some ten miles out of San Jose.

  The hamlet consisted of a few ancient trees, a general store, a freight station, one filling station, and a saloon; the customers were mainly farmers, and the cowpunchers who came down from the Mt. Hamilton range.

  Honest John was not surprised to find the Eldorado empty, and the bartender reading a magazine. Not enough business here to cause fallen arches. He was young and husky, a tall, good-looking fellow, except for the griped and sullen expression of eyes and mouth.

  “You Orrin Elwell?”

  “Yeah, and if you’re John Carmody, you might as well get out of here.”

  “You sure welcome customers. Yeah, this is easier than pitching hay, all right,” Carmody observed amiably. “Bourbon. And have one yourself.”

  “You quit ribbing my wife, wise guy, you understand?”

  Carmody chuckled. “Hell, I’m through with her, I come out here to pick on you. Irritating people is my hobby.”

  Elwell scowled, set out a bottle, and did not take one himself.

  “Sure a nice job, knocking off your in-laws,” Honest John observed cheerily, “Too bad about the old lady, but he was a crusty fool, I guess you feel better now, huh?”

  “Listen, pot-gut, I read the papers. Go back to your prunes.”

  Carmody poured himself another. “Not till I get through picking around the ruins and the barn and everything. Ten to one, Gunnar Agard didn’t do it.”

  “Who the hell did?”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised if you did. Like I told your wife.”

  Elwell had had just about enough. He rounded the end of the bar, and headed for the moth-eaten pool table. He was quick enough, but he moved as though bartending had given him sore feet. His shoes had knife slits to keep them from pinching. Honest John got all that as he grabbed the bottle and said, “Easy! Don’t try using that cue, or I’ll cold-caulk you proper.”

  Elwell halted. Wrath reddened his face. Two long scars became plainer, one on the cheek, one on the forehead.

  Carmody set down the bottle. “You better move to town and keep on the job, or I’ll be seeing more of her.”

  Elwell cursed, made a lunge, whacking down with the butt of the cue. Carmody slipped on a wet cigar stump and lost time getting clear. The blow missed his head, but cracked him at the angle of neck and shoulder. That should have paralyzed him, and plenty, yet while it hurt more than enough, it didn’t have the steam that Elwell’s size and build should put behind it.

  Carmody continued his pivot, moving in. He stamped down with his heel, catching Elwell on the instep. And that was paralyzing. The cue dropped to the sawdust. The man groaned in misery. Carmody knocked him back against the cue-rack.

  “Come on out to Agard’s and see me. Next time, do it right.”

  * * * *

  It was midnight when he parked in the drive, and stepped into Agard’s farmhouse. For a bachelor’s dump, it was very neat. The uniform cap, the binnacle, and the framed pictures on the walls explained that Agard had spent years at sea.

  In the cooler was one of Mrs. Bean’s whooping apple pies. The size, the pattern of slashes knifed into the crust, and the tang of lemon peel all contributed to the identification. That pie which she had taken to her neighbor, the day before the murder, made Honest John think of the slabs the old lady had handed him.

  He started to eat a hunk, then decided to make some coffee. After scouting for a moment, he found a box of matches and without too much fumbling, got the gasoline range going. It made for speed; but in Winter, a wood stove kept the place warm. For all his years, Agard split knotty chunks of oak. “Swinging an axe,” he told Carmody, “keeps you young.”

  “Quit calling me Pop, I’m not so old.”

  For her age, Mrs. Bean had been an attractive woman.

  And that’s the motivation behind a good many rural murders.

  Carmody’s pie choked him. Ashamed of his logic, he repeated, “But it has happened, it does happen, the D.A knows all about that sort of funny-business, and he’s got a man in jail…”

  He needed rest, and needed it badly; but that apple pie prodded him. So despite the hour, he crossed the road, and walked down the long drive through the orchard and past the deep blackness of Bean’s eucalyptus grove.

  Trifles now pulled together; since he had worked on the farm, he could find meanings which the cops might have missed.

  Honest John headed for the barn, which now housed tractor and truck, instead of horses. The gas barrel, sitting on a saw-buck frame, had a chain and lock gadget to secure the filling plug and the outlet faucet. From all he had been able to gather, there had been no effort to learn the source of the fuel.

  Suppose there had been a family quarrel. Those shallow axe-cuts might have been made by a woman. If Mrs. Bean had gone wild, as farm women have been known to do, she might have tried to conceal the crime. And instead of returning to a corpse, she came back to face the rifle in the hands of a dazed and dying man.

  Or, wounded, Bean might have shot his wife, and then, hours later, started the fire.

  Carmody noted that the lock had been jimmied. This was not apparent except on close scrutiny, for the shacklebolt was partially thrust back into its seat. Lying against the wall was a pinch bar, dust coated, except for one end, which had been wiped clean. There was no trace or blood anywhere.

  In the tool room, there were nails where the bar had hung. Its shape was outlined on the wall. On the floor he found three match stumps, carefully ground out: paper matches.

  Carmody spent some minutes scrutinizing the place. In the corner nearest the door was a forge and an anvil, and a sack of blacksmith’s coal, and some plowshares which were to be welded.

  The old burlap bag had rotted from age. Some of the granulated coal, a grade selected because it was free from sulphur, had leaked to the floor; a fresh leakage, a fresh break. He looked at the pinch bar again. The dustless end had bits of powdered coal on it. Someone had wiped the metal on the slack of the half emptied bag.

  On the way back, the weariness Carmody had been fighting swooped up in an overwhelming wave. He was just short of walking in his sleep. How he got to Agard’s was not entirely clear to him, for he’d passed the eucalyptus grove without having been aware of its foreboding darkness, nor its smell.

  Yet there was a compensation, an unveiling of perceptions normally buried. He knew, suddenly, that he was being hunted.

  Worse than that, the hunter had him wide open.

  Panic-fumbling saved him. He tried to sidestep and whirl when a man lunged from the shadows of the porch. Instead, he fell flat. His utter helplessness shocked him, and when he knew that the whisking axe had whacked into the veranda column, instead of into his skull, he yelled: an explosion of terror, relief, fury, all in one.

  That cross between shriek and bull-bellow shook Carmody as a man’s own cry arouses him from a nightmare, leaving him more shaken by his own voice than by the horror which had pursued him. And the axe-man, expecting a knockout and getting a blow-off of sound, dropped his weapon.

  Carmody’s reserves rushed into action. He snatched the axe and yelled, “I can cut meat, too!”

  He bounded in pursuit, and stumbled over an irrigation d
ike. And then, as he picked himself up, a flashlight blazed full in his eyes. Too late, he understood why footfalls had seemed to be receding and at the same time retreating. Where one had fled, another had advanced.

  Carmody flung himself sidewise, and got a short grip on the axe. A man commanded, “Drop it! What the hell you prowling about for?”

  “Why, you dope, get the guy that tried to conk me!”

  “Drop it, quick!”

  It was Hapgood, the deputy. “Drop it now!”

  And by the time Carmody explained, there was not a Chinaman’s chance of overtaking the prowler.

  “Sure,” the deputy growled, “I heard something funny, but when you hollered, I figured you were going amuck again.”

  “Again?”

  “Referring to last night’s axe work. What were you snooping around the barn for, huh?”

  “Criminal always returns to scene of crime, huh? That was your game, I guess.”

  “You haven’t answered me.”

  “You were watching, and saw me.”

  “Sure.”

  “All right, you saw all I did, and if you can make any more out of it than I can, you’re smart. You think I faked that mix-up by the porch?”

  Hapgood shook his head. “I wasn’t close enough to see, but I could hear. Yeah, there was someone.”

  Carmody mopped his forehead. “You’re telling me!”

  Hapgood grinned sourly. “Old man Agard was released on bail early this evening. Maybe he don’t want a dick snooping.”

  “So that’s why you came out?” When the deputy didn’t answer, Carmody went on, “Well, I am a prune picking patriot, and I got to get some shut-eye. If you’re going to prowl, I’ll risk sleep.”

  * * * *

  When the sun awakened Honest John, Hapgood had left, but the aches had not. And the prune pickers had not yet shown up.

  He was just finishing his coffee when Gunnar Agard stepped in. He had arrived on the second bus. The old fellow chuckled. “Surprised you, huh? Well, I figured I’d better keep an eye on things, principle or no principle.” Then, when he learned that the pickers had not showed up: “They’ll be back, they got pay coming. What do you aim to do?”