by Alice Duncan
“Calhoun? The president of the Farmer’s and Rancher’s Bank?” Both my mother and father—and Jack, the wretch—had gathered around, at first to scold or scoff, but now with varying degrees of shock, horror and fascination. Jack was really peeved because it had been I and not he who’d found the body.
“I don’t know why you always get all the fun,” he muttered.
Pa whapped him on the back of the head, although not too hard. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if he’d slugged him, since Jack must have developed a callus back there from being whapped so many times in recent weeks. “That’s enough of that, Jack Blue. A man is dead.”
Shaking her head, Ma said, “And you say he was shot in the back?”
“That’s what Armando Contreras said.”
“What was Contreras doing there?” asked Pa. Sensible question.
“I don’t know. Maybe he sustained some damage at his gas station during the storm. Or maybe he was having breakfast at the Cowboy Café.”
“Could be,” said Pa, musing.
“Anyhow, that’s all I know. Phil asked me to row to the police station and fetch Chief Vickers, and I did that. When the chief got there, he told everyone to disperse so that he and Mr. Packard could conduct their investigation.”
“Investigation. Huh.” It didn’t sound to me as if Pa considered the chief and his deputy particularly able men, but I don’t think he meant it that way. I think he meant that “investigation” sounded like too highfalutin a word to use in so backwater a place as Rosedale, New Mexico. Couldn’t say as I blamed him.
“I understand the man wasn’t well liked,” said Ma in a hesitating sort of voice, as if she didn’t think she should be speaking ill of the dead. “But to shoot him . . . well, that’s just terrible. Poor Hortense. And don’t they have children?”
“Gladys and Herschel,” I said, nodding. “They’re grown up now, but they still live at home.”
“Still, it must be a terrible blow. I wonder if they know.” Ma was always thinking of other people.
So was I, but not because I was nice like she was. What I wanted to do was talk to the grieving family and find out if they knew who could have done the wicked deed. “Maybe you should take them a covered dish or something, Ma. I’ll row you over to their place.”
I got a look from my mother that told me she knew my motives weren’t pure, but she only said, “That’s a thoughtful suggestion, Annabelle.”
Jack stuck his tongue out at me. Figures. Lucky for him Pa didn’t notice, or he’d have received another wallop for his effort.
It was a rotten shame the telephone lines were down, because I’d have loved to spread the news. But the town was kind of in chaos, what with the streets being flooded and all, and there was no telling when the electricity or the telephones would be operable again. The men who handled the telephone wires were also firemen. In a town the size of Rosedale, people had to do lots of things; for instance, our coroner was also a dentist, even though the town was virtually bursting at the seams with doctors. Anyhow, regretting the lost telephone, I just sighed and asked my father, “Would you like me to do anything else in the boat, Pa? Are we going to open the store today?”
“Yes, we’re going to open. I expect folks will need all sorts of things, especially if their spring houses flooded or their barns got wrecked. And no, you don’t need to do anything else that requires the boat.”
“Will you see to the counter, Annabelle? I think you had a good idea about the covered dish. I’ll go back to the house and put something together. Although without electric, God alone knows how they’ll keep it cool until they can bake it.”
“Maybe the electric will come on soon,” I said, hoping the floodwaters would still be so deep by the time she’d finished cooking as to render it impossible for Ma to get her covered dish to the Calhouns’ house, which was several blocks away, without me rowing her there.
But there was no hope for instant satisfaction. I had to settle in with more stories from Weird Tales Magazine while I sat behind the counter waiting for customers. Jack still washed windows, grumbling all the time, and Pa was up on the roof, hammering shingles back into place and, I presume, tarring over them. I’m not quite sure how roofs are put together, not being very good with a hammer and nail. I’m better in a garden. I’m best in a library, but I didn’t live in one, more’s the pity.
However, I had thought to prepare myself for a dull day, figuring, in spite of Pa, that not many people would be frequenting Blue’s after that terrible storm. Therefore, I’d armed myself with Powder and Patch, by an English lady named Georgette Heyer. I was partial to murder mysteries, but I’d read another one of her books, The Black Moth, and become fascinated with Regency England. Naturally, I’d had to use the library’s encyclopedia to find out what Regency England was, but still, her books were smashing—if you don’t mind if I drop a Britishism into this journal set in what might as well be the Old West.
It turned out that the day wasn’t as dull as I’d feared it would be. Before too long, after I’d set aside Weird Tales and picked up Powder and Patch, my best friend in the world, Myrtle Howell, hove into view through the front door of Blue’s. As I’ve already mentioned, Myrtle worked at the cosmetics counter at Joyce Pruitt’s Drug Store right next door to Blue’s, which worked out well for the two of us, being best friends and all.
“Hey, Myrtle, did you hear about Mr. Calhoun?”
“The banker? No. What about him?” Myrtle, who looked a little the worse for wear this morning, stamped mud from her shoes and scraped them on the scraper outside the door before setting foot in the store. Wretched floods. Maybe one day the town fathers would at least pave the streets. We citizens deserved some consideration, after all.
“How’d you get your shoes muddy?” I asked, since Pruitt’s was right next door.
“Had to go down the stairs and pick up some stuff from Mr. Pruitt’s boat. Lousy steps are all muddy.”
I tutted about the mud, but was happy about everything else; she hadn’t heard about Mr. Calhoun. Putting Powder and Patch down on the counter with a thump it didn’t deserve, I said, “He’s dead. I found the body when I rowed to Gunderson’s Hardware to get some roofing shingles.”
“Good heavens!”
Myrtle, suitably startled, astonished and aghast, slapped a hand to her cheek and hurried over to the counter to hear more. “Tell me about it, Annabelle! You found the body? How dreadful for you!”
“It was pretty awful, all right,” I told her with unwarranted relish. “His head bumped against the boat when I was untying it from the horse railing.”
With a grimace, Myrtle put her elbows on the counter and said, “Tell me about all of it, Annabelle! Mr. Pruitt said I could leave work for about a half hour while he and Frank”—Frank was Mr. Pruitt’s second in command at the drug store—“got things organized. That storm knocked everything around.”
“Nice of him to let you have some time off.”
“Well, my cosmetics weren’t jostled, but lots of the pill and powder bottles in the pharmacy rolled around or got smashed when they fell off the shelves, and only Mr. Pruitt and Frank know how to sort them out. I wouldn’t be of any help to them.”
“That makes sense.”
“But you said Mr. Calhoun’s head bumped against your boat? Oh, Annabelle, how horrid!” She shuddered, I think with more fascination than dismay. Which I understood completely. Life could be so dull in Rosedale.
“Yes. I’d gone inside and bought the roofing shingles and nails and tar, and had just reached to untie the boat, when I looked down and saw his face kind of staring up at me. Only he wasn’t staring at anything, if you know what I mean. I mean, he was dead. I could tell. His face was all waxy and covered in mud, and he looked . . . lifeless. It was . . . well, it wasn’t a whole lot of fun at the time.”
“I should say not. Does anyone know how it happened? How in the world did he end up in the water in the first place?”
Aha. Now
came the really interesting part. “At first I thought maybe he’d taken supper at the Cowboy Café the night before and slipped and fallen, but after Phil and Pete came out with the grappling hook—”
“The grappling hook?”
“Well, there wasn’t any other way to get him out, really. You know how high the water is, and it’s all muddy and full of trash and leaves and stuff. But they had a hard time fishing him out from where they stood on the boardwalk, so I offered to take the hook and snag his belt with it.”
Myrtle’s nose wrinkled. “Oh, Annabelle, how . . . how . . . oh, Annabelle.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t a lot of fun.” That was the truth. I remembered that grappling hook and trying to decide where to hook Mr. Calhoun with it and not wanting to pierce his flesh. “But I got two tines of the hook under his belt, and the men on the boardwalk hauled him out. He was heavy because of all the water and mud and stuff.”
“Ew.”
“There’s worse,” I told Myrtle.
“What could be worse than that?”
“He was shot in the back.”
“He what?” Myrtle screeched.
I nodded solemnly. “Phil sent me rowing to the police station, and when Chief Vickers and Deputy Packard arrived, Armando Contreras told me Mr. Calhoun had been shot in the back. I guess whoever shot him shoved him into the water afterward.”
“Good Lord.”
For Myrtle, who had been “saved” a month or so prior by a detestable tent revivalist, the mention of the Lord in this context could be chalked up to shock.
“So he was murdered,” I said solemnly. “And from a couple of grumbles from the men gathered around Gunderson’s, there might be more than one person who could have done it.”
“Oh, Annabelle, no!”
“Mr. Tindall said Mr. Calhoun cheated him out of his ranch.”
“No!”
“Well, that’s what he said. He called him a snake in the grass.” And a few other things, but I didn’t want to sully Myrtle’s tender ears with Mr. Tindall’s blasphemies. Anyhow, he’d apologized for them.
Myrtle and I were leaning over the counter, one of us on each side, ready to settle in for a good, solid gossip-fest, when we were interrupted by the entry of Chief Vickers and Deputy Packard, who had come, as promised, to take my statement. Nuts. I’d wanted to grill—I think that’s the appropriate word—Myrtle about anything she might know regarding Mr. Calhoun and his family and business practices. Not that Myrtle knew any more about banking than I did. Still . . .
Well, there was always Richard, my brother-in-law and second in command at the bank. Maybe I could grill him instead.
Chapter Three
We’d gone over my finding of the body and fishing Calhoun out of the water and so forth, when Chief Vickers said in his most policemanly voice, “I understand that your brother-in-law, Richard MacDougall, and Mr. Calhoun, his employer, had been having problems on the job. Do you know anything about that, Miss Annabelle?”
My mouth dropped open. “What? I never heard that. Anyway, so what? According to what I heard this morning, lots of people had trouble with Mr. Calhoun,” said I in staunch defense of my stuffy brother-in-law. Still, if the chief was implying Richard might have murdered Mr. Calhoun, he was an idiot. Richard would no more shoot anyone in the back than I would. And I wouldn’t.
“That’s the word I’ve heard from reliable sources,” said the chief.
“Nonsense. Richard has never said one bad thing about Mr. Calhoun. At least not in front of me.”
“The employees at the Farmer’s and Rancher’s Bank claim to have heard them arguing hot and heavy several times recently.” Chief Vickers didn’t look at me as he spoke, but kept fingering the crease in his trousers. Embarrassed to be asking me about a relative-by-marriage as a possible murder suspect, no doubt. Good thing, too.
“If they were arguing, it was probably because Richard didn’t appreciate Mr. Calhoun’s dirty business tactics any more than anyone else in town did.”
Shaking his head, Chief Vickers finally glanced at me. “Well, as you can imagine, we have to look at everyone who might have had trouble with Mr. Calhoun, Annabelle.”
“Then talk to the whole town! According to Micah Tindall and Armando Contreras, everybody hated Mr. Calhoun, because he was a cheat and a liar.”
Chief Vickers sat back in his chair, evidently taken aback by my vehemence. Which made me wonder if Pa really did think he was incompetent, and if so, if he didn’t have good reason. “If you don’t believe me, ask anyone,” I said with some heat. “Only this morning, I heard two men say they hated Mr. Calhoun.”
“We will,” the chief said stiffly, “question all people who might have had a problem with Mr. Calhoun.”
I sniffed meaningfully.
“And,” added Vickers, also meaningfully, “that includes your brother-in-law.”
Nuts to that. “Richard is a fine, upstanding fellow, and everybody in town knows it, Chief Vickers. There are tons of people in town who hated Mr. Calhoun’s guts. Why, Mr. Tindall called him a snake in the grass and a son of a . . . well, he hated the man. Said he stole his ranch. Told me so to my face.”
“Is that right?” The chief appeared mildly interested. “Well, these are early days yet. We’ll do a thorough job of investigating the crime, and speak to anyone who might have information.”
“Does that include Richard?” I asked bitterly.
“We have to look at everyone with a possible motive, Miss Annabelle. You know that. But we’ll find the murderer. You can count on that.”
Could I? When the chief of police honestly believed Richard MacDougall, perhaps the most boring man in all of Rosedale, might be capable of a vile murder? Recalling a few incidents in the recent past, it occurred to me that I, Annabelle Blue, had been better at nabbing the true criminals in various cases than the chief of police and his minions. I resolved then and there to enlist my friends to help me solve this crime before it could be pinned on poor, humdrum Richard.
And poor Hannah! How awful for her to have her husband suspected of such a dire act! No, sir. I wasn’t going to sit on my duff and allow such a miscarriage of justice to transpire. Not that Chief Vickers had pinned anything on Richard. Yet. And not that I knew what I could do about finding the real culprit, but I was sure I’d think of something. I was resourceful that way.
“I’m certain if you investigate thoroughly, you’ll find others in town who had grievances against Mr. Calhoun and who had much better reasons to kill him than Richard,” I told the chief. “People other than Mr. Tindall have told me he practiced low-down banking methods.” That was a flat lie, but I did recall Mr. Tindall’s bitter statement that it would be easier to find people who hated Mr. Calhoun than those who didn’t. “Mr. Tindall was firm in his belief that Mr. Calhoun had cheated him out of his ranch, and he’d said there were lots of others like him whom Mr. Calhoun had bilked. If there were arguments between Mr. Calhoun and Richard, I’m sure that’s the reason.”
“Huh. Well, we’ll check out all leads,” said the chief in a flat voice that made me wonder about his sincerity.
The chief’s indifference clinched it. I was going to hike myself back to Gunderson’s Hardware and get Phil to assist me in uncovering the truth about Mr. Calhoun’s demise. Phil, who was a man in a man’s world, would have better luck questioning folks at the bank than I would, being female and only nineteen years old. The world was so unfair! At least women had finally been given the vote. Of course, Turkey, a nation I’d always believed to practice repressive methods as regards women, had allowed its female population to vote in 1918, but I’m not here to carp. I’m just saying, is all.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t leave the store at that moment. I had to wait until Pa came down from hammering shingles in place before I could desert the counter. Fortunately for me, the day didn’t prove to be as tedious as I’d feared it would be. Many people seemed to be in need of provisions Blue’s Dry Goods and Mercantile Emporium
could provide, thanks to the ghastly rainstorm. Naturally, most of them had to row their boats to the store. We Rosedale-ites were hardy folk.
By mid-morning our electricity was restored, which made things a little easier on me, who had a hard time squinting into the shadowy notions corner when fetching Mrs. Dabney a spool of thread the exact color as the one she was almost out of. Mrs. Dabney was one of Rosedale’s few well-off folks who could afford a servant to row her around until the floodwaters subsided. Luckily for me, the servant in this instance was a girl I used to go to school with, Virginia Feather.
As Mrs. Dabney proceeded to look over bolts of fabric my mother had selected from the finest warehouses in the eastern parts of the United States where civilization reigned, Virginia and I had quite the gabfest about the demise of Mr. Calhoun. Virginia, like Myrtle, was both horrified and titillated when I told her about the morning’s premier event.
“Goodness sakes, Annabelle, I wish I could telephone home. My father was having a huge fight with Mr. Calhoun. He’ll probably be glad the man got what he deserved.” Then, as the good Christian girl she was, Virginia clapped a hand over her mouth.
Interesting. Very interesting. I said, “Your father’s not the only one who had problems with Mr. Calhoun from what I hear.” Which hadn’t been enough, darn it. I wished Pa would finish with the roof so I could go back to Gunderson’s! “What happened with your father?”
“Mr. Calhoun cheated him out of a piece of property he was going to buy. Turned out Mr. Calhoun didn’t even own the property in question. And Pa had made a deposit and everything. Then Calhoun wouldn’t give the deposit back. Pa went to the bank several times. The last time he went, I understand he really let Mr. Calhoun have it. At the top of his lungs.” It didn’t look to me as though Virginia had yet decided whether to applaud her father’s hollering at the dirty banker or be embarrassed by his behavior. The things we children have to suffer for the sake of our parents.
“Mr. Calhoun sounds like a true villain. I hope your father manages to get his money back. Mr. Calhoun’s behavior doesn’t sound right to me. In fact, it sounds downright criminal.”
