“I figured you would,” Tully said. “You’re probably the only one here who knows the words.”
“We don’t even know if the boy was Catholic,” the priest said. “Certainly Agatha has never mentioned religion to me. You know what she is, Bo?”
“Basically, an ornery old lady,” Tully said. “She was a fierce teacher, I can tell you that. You learned your Shakespeare whether you wanted to or not. She single-handedly turned me from Pap’s son into a civilized human being.”
“That seems a bit extreme,” Flynn said.
“Pap’s son?”
“Civilized human being. Have you ever caught him being civilized, Pap?”
“I did once,” Pap said, “and it scared me. He could never last as sheriff of Blight County if he was civilized.”
“He’s been nice to me,” Judy said.
“That’s because you’re a woman,” Flynn said. “Bo loves all women.”
“My one weakness,” Tully said.
“Don’t you think that’s the perfect formula for sin, Padre?” Dave said.
“I have a hard time keeping up on human chemistry,” the priest said.
“I went to church once,” Tanzy said.
Pap said, “I guess it didn’t take, huh, Tanzy?”
“I kind of liked it. Seemed peaceful or something. My grandmother took me. Then she died and I never went again.”
“That’s why I don’t go,” Pap said. “You get that close to God he might decide to snap you up.”
The priest shook his head.
They turned off the highway onto the road leading to Quail Creek Ranch. The van thumped and rattled over the rough road. Pap said, “I got an idea what could fix this road for Agatha and Bernice.”
“What’s that?” Tully said.
“That’s for me to know.”
Tully stopped in front of the gate.
“My gosh, look at the birds,” Judy said. “They look like real birds flying up across the bars.”
“Yeah, they do,” said Tully. “Pap, get out and open the gate.”
“Why is it always me? What’s wrong with Flynn or Dave opening it?”
“Because Flynn is a priest and Dave’s an Indian. You don’t expect a priest or an Indian to open a gate, do you?”
“That’s right,” Dave said. “We Indians have a firm principle against opening gates.”
Muttering a string of obscenities, Pap got out and opened the gate.
“I should make him walk the rest of the way to the house,” Tully said.
“You know he’s always armed,” Dave said.
“True. So I guess I’ll wait for him.”
Agatha, Bernice, and Bunny came out to greet them. Ernie Thorpe stood in the doorway of the house, as if guarding it. You can’t fool me, you little poacher, Tully thought. “Ernie,” he yelled. “You got your cuffs on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well bring them over here and put them on this sorry individual.”
Ernie walked out and spun Tanzy around. He pulled out his pocketknife and cut the twine off his hands and started to put on the cuffs.
“Wait,” Tully said. “Don’t put them on. Tanzy’s going to the burial with us. It will be better without the cuffs. If he runs, shoot him and we’ll bury him, too.”
Tanzy said, “I ain’t going to run.”
Tully turned to Agatha. “The graves ready?”
“Yes, Bernice and I selected a shady spot on a knoll overlooking the creek and Ernie hired four nice young men from town to dig the graves. They said they could use the work, but when we told them what happened, they said they wouldn’t take the money and would stay for the burial. Would it be all right, Bo, if I looked in my father’s casket?”
“Not a good idea,” he said.
“I suppose after all these years it’s just as well. And I still have the pictures.”
“Yes, you do.”
A white Suburban pulled up behind the van. Susan got out. She said to Agatha, “I got to thinking about the burial service and decided to drive up. I hope that’s okay.” She was wearing her lab uniform and had obviously rushed up to the ranch from work. Her dark brown hair had been tied in kind of a knot and was starting to come loose. Tully thought she was even more beautiful than usual.
“Oh, that is so thoughtful of you, Susan,” Agatha said. “And it’s wonderful to see you again. I do hope you’re getting back together with Bo.”
“We’re working on it,” she said. “I’ve given him the ten steps for improvement. We’ll have to see how he does on them. This is such a sad occasion, Agatha. I hope you don’t mind that I came along uninvited. I brought along some flowers. They’re just lilacs, but I had a ton of them growing at the house. I know you’ve read Whitman’s poem about the death of Lincoln.”
“‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,’” Agatha said. “Lilacs are perfect. I’ll have Ernie carry them up to the knoll.” That’s when she noticed Tanzy. “Good heavens! Who is this?”
“Just another one of my criminals,” Tully said. “We picked him up on our way here. And this young lady is Judy. She’s going to work for Dave at his House of Fry.”
Dave said, “What? Oh, right, I must have forgotten.”
“I’m so glad all of you could come,” Agatha said. “It would have been such a sad occasion if Bernice and Bunny and I had been the only ones. And Ernie, of course. He’s such a nice young man, and he and Bunny get along wonderfully.”
Tully glared over Agatha’s head at Ernie, who gave one of his innocent shrugs.
As they trudged up to the knoll overlooking Quail Creek, they came to the four grave diggers sitting under a tree smoking cigarettes. Dave stopped in midstride, “Stubb and Gordy!”
“Oh, you’ve met before!” exclaimed Agatha. The two loggers were as surprised as Dave. Agatha introduced the other two diggers, who had leaped up and were dusting off their jeans.
Father James Flynn gave a brief but fitting talk. Then he asked if anyone there could sing. Jim raised his grease-blackened hand. “Hit it, Jim,” Tully said. The kid’s voice was high and clear and beautiful and wafted up into the birch branches and drifted out over Quail Creek like some wild thing released from a cage.
Tully had to tug hard on the corner of his mustache to keep tears from welling up. He didn’t recognize the hymn and wasn’t even sure it was a hymn. Maybe Jim had just made it up. “I was trying to remember why we had brought you along, Jim,” he told the boy afterward, “and I guess this was it.”
“I’m glad I could do something,” Jim said.
They left Stubb and Gordy and the two other loggers to fill in the graves and walked back down to the house.
“You want me to head back to town, boss?” Ernie asked, coming up alongside of Tully.
“Yeah, your little vacation is over. Pap and Dave are staying with me. You take everybody else back into town in your patrol car. Get Judy a cabin at the Pine Creek Motel.”
“As I recall, the owner still hates you.”
“Yeah, well tell Janet this is official business and the county will pay the bill. Judy’s a witness in the string of robberies. Arrange for her to eat her meals over at Granny’s Café.”
“That’s kind of mean.”
“Sure, but it will be a while before she notices. You know what to do with Tanzy. Drop Jim off in Famine and thank his mother for letting him go. Tell him we’ll get him an official Blight County sheriff’s T-shirt. Tomorrow, bring Lurch up here to pick up the Humvee and check it out.”
“What about Kincaid?”
“As soon as I know something, Ernie, I’ll tell you.”
“Okay if I take Bunny back with us?”
“Yes, take her, you miserable little poacher.”
“Thanks, Bo. I’m sorry if I—”
“Never apologize for stealing another man’s woman, Ernie, because it won’t do you any good. Besides, Susan and I may be back together again, as soon as I improve somewhat. So I guess I’ll let you liv
e.”
23
TULLY PULLED THE van into the Finch driveway. He, Pap, and Dave got out, walked up to the porch. Dave rang the doorbell. Margaret answered. “My goodness, Sheriff, you’re back. Dave and Pap, too. Good to see all of you. Come in, come in!”
“I’m really sorry to bother you, Margaret, but we’re back on business, I’m afraid. The last time we were here you happened to mention that your basement was full of firearms.”
Teddy Finch walked in at that moment. “So you’re back on business I heard you say, Bo. I hope Margaret hasn’t been up to something illegal.”
Tully laughed. “Not that I know of, Teddy. I’ll bring you up to date on the mystery we’re trying to solve. I understand you know Agatha Wrenn.”
“We do indeed. Both Agatha and Bernice. They’re lovely women. Bernice is a wonderful artist and Agatha is a distinguished Elizabethan scholar. You think our mine might have something to do with the disappearance of Agatha’s father?”
“It’s possible. We found a small mine in the drainage directly below the Finch Mine. The cliff above it had been blasted to create a rock slide that covered up the old mine entrance.”
Margaret looked shocked. “Good heavens!”
Teddy nodded his head. “You know, Bo, my father knew some secret he said he would tell me someday, but he never did. I think it was something he knew about my grandfather.”
“We found the remains of two people in the little mine,” Tully said.
Teddy’s mouth gaped. Margaret shook her head and appeared about to cry.
“Now for the bad part,” Tully said. “Both of them had been murdered. One of them was Agatha’s father, the other, Sean O’Boyle, a kid of about fourteen.”
“Murdered!” gasped Margaret. “Oh no!”
“I knew my dad’s secret must have been something terrible,” Teddy said. “That’s why he could never bring himself to tell me. What you’re thinking, Bo, is that my grandfather discovered that little mine below where the Finch Mine now sits. He killed Agatha’s father and the boy, and then filed his own claim and blasted a shaft down from the top of the mountain to intersect the ore.”
Margaret looked as if she was about to faint. Dave put his arm around her and eased her into a chair. Teddy sat down on the couch, shaking his head.
“You’re right, Teddy, that’s what I’ve been thinking,” Tully said. “I hope it doesn’t turn out to be the case. What we do know is that each of the victims was killed with a .43-caliber bullet that has a ridge at its base. It was probably fired from a rolling-block rifle used by the Cubans in the Spanish-American War. A lot of American veterans of that war brought the rifles home. You told me that your grandfather was a veteran of the war. It’s possible he brought one or two of those rifles back with him. The last time we were here Margaret mentioned you had a basement full of old firearms. So I was hoping you would let us look through them and see if we can find any rolling-blocks.”
Teddy seemed dazed. “Of course, Bo, you’re welcome to look for whatever you like. I know enough about you to know that you have a warrant on you somewhere, but you don’t have to bother with that. If you find something, I’ll sign whatever you need to make it official.”
Margaret seemed to recover faster than Teddy. She said, “Follow me, Bo. I’ll show you the way down to the basement. It’s kind of a mess, with guns and boxes of bullets piled everywhere. Teddy has always been going to get everything organized, but he’s never got around to it.”
Tully had never seen anything like it. Half the basement had been partitioned off into a large room. Racks of rifles covered every wall, and crates were filled with handguns and boxes of bullets.
Tully said, “We’re looking for rifles, Margaret, so we shouldn’t have to mess with the crates.”
“Do whatever you need to, Bo! Just call Teddy or me if you need any help.”
“Thanks, Margaret. We’ll try to get this done in a hurry so we don’t ruin the rest of your evening.” He knew he had already ruined something a great deal longer than an evening.
The search went much faster than any of them had expected, given the number of firearms present. Within in an hour they had checked all the racks and found two Remington rolling-block rifles in .43 caliber. Teddy came down to the basement and helped them find a box of cartridges for it. The bullets had turned green. “In Cuba, our troops thought green bullets were poisonous and maybe they were,” he said. “They probably had microbes all over them in that hot, moist climate. Many wounded died from infection.”
Tully said, “I’ll have Lurch fire a round from each of these rifles and compare the striations with the striations on the bullets that killed Tom and the boy. That should tell us if Jack Finch was the fellow who shot them.”
“I hate to think our good fortune may have resulted from the murder of two people, but from what I’ve heard about my grandfather, I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“It’s certainly not your fault, Teddy. I’ll give you a call in a couple of days and let you know if the fatal bullets came from either of these two guns.”
“However it turns out, I’d appreciate hearing,” Teddy said. “I’ve also got filing boxes of papers from the mine that I’ve never looked at. They’re pretty boring, but I’ll check out some of those from the early days and maybe I’ll learn something.”
“That could be a big help, Teddy. Obviously, whoever committed the murders is long dead and there never will be a trial of any kind, but I told Agatha I would solve the mystery for her if I could. So that’s what I’m doing.”
“I understand completely, Bo. I want to know, too. Also, I’d like to do something for Agatha.”
“If you’re thinking about giving her money, she would never accept it,” Tully said.
Pap looked up from a crate of handguns he’d been inspecting. “I’ll tell you something she might appreciate. You could give her that big pile of slag you got up at the mine. It must have been setting there for a hundred years.”
“What on earth would she do with that?” Tully said.
“For one thing, she’s got that road that needs surfacing. I think the slag would make a heck of a road.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, Pap!” Teddy said. “I’ll write you out a paper giving her ownership of the whole pile.”
“Great! I’ll have a couple of dump trucks and a loader come in and pick it up tomorrow.”
“You sure it’s something she’ll like, Pap?” Teddy asked.
“She’ll love it, Teddy, she’ll love it!”
24
“NOT THE GUN,” Lurch said. “I’ve tested them both and neither is the gun that killed the guys in the mine.”
“You’re sure, Lurch?”
“Positive.”
“I can’t say I’m sorry,” Tully said, propping his alligator-skin boots up on his desk. “I don’t think this clears Jack Finch, though. Margaret and Teddy aren’t going to be satisfied. Jack could have used another .43-caliber gun and ditched it somewhere. On the other hand, when your son is named after Theodore Roosevelt and your grandson is, too, I kind of doubt you would ditch a weapon you had picked up during your campaign in Cuba with Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. It’s one heck of a souvenir. I think the rifles you just checked are only some of the rifles Jack brought home with him. There’s a third .43-caliber rifle somewhere. Or at least there was.”
“I’m sorry it wasn’t one of these, boss.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, too. It would have wrapped this mystery up for Agatha. At least she’s getting a nice road out of it.”
“How come?”
“Pap is up at the Finch Mine right now, loading a huge pile of slag onto dump trucks. I guess the slag will crunch up into a nice surface.”
“You trust Pap a whole lot more than you used to.”
“Nope, Lurch, I don’t. He’s got me worried sick about the whole deal.”
Lurch went back to his computer shaking his head.
Tully dialed Susan. “How about lun
ch, sweetheart?”
“Anytime, Bo,” her assistant said. “But we’d better not let Susan find out.”
“Good idea, Amy,” he said.
Susan came on laughing. He knew Amy had told her. He had forgotten they sounded almost identical on the phone. Amy isn’t that bad looking, either, he thought. “Ah,” he said, “at last I’ve got the right sweetheart.”
“Yes, you do. Lunch sounds great.”
“Super,” he said. “I’ll meet you at Crabbs.”
“Why do we always eat at Crabbs?”
“Because I don’t have to think what to order for lunch at Crabbs. I always get the beef dip and fries, and it’s always good.”
“That’s what I like about you, Bo, your sense of adventure.”
“Usually I don’t go to such extremes. See you at noon.” He hung up.
Daisy yelled at him through the open door. “Pick up on two, Bo. It’s a Mr. Finch.”
Bo shuddered. Pap had probably been caught up to no good. “Hello, Teddy,” he said. “It’s about Pap, isn’t it?”
“Pap? No, I haven’t seen Pap. You worried something happened to him, Bo?”
“No, Teddy, not at all. What can I do for you?”
“You know how I told you I was going to look through those old papers we took out of the mine office?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I found something of interest. My grandfather didn’t start the mine. A man by the name of Blunt did, Howard Blunt. He took Jack Finch on as a partner about a year after the mine started. Six months later there is no mention of Blunt. From then on, the mine is called Finch.”
“What happened to Blunt?”
“I don’t know. He just vanished. Maybe they had a falling-out. I suspect Jack Finch was the kind of man you didn’t want to have a falling-out with. I looked through dozens of papers and there is just no mention of Blunt. There’s some indication this Blunt fellow and my grandfather joined the Rough Riders together.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this, Teddy. If Jack Finch signed onto the mine after it got started, he probably wasn’t the one who discovered Tom’s little mine. Therefore, he wasn’t the one who killed Tom and the boy.”
The Double-Jack Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) Page 14
