by Robert Knott
“Looking for your husband.”
“Well, I am sorry to say he’s not in. Might I be able to help you with something?”
“No, just wanted to have a chat with him.”
Irene shook her head.
“So sorry, he’s gone. But I’m happy to chat. Love to, actually. Can I pour you two a drink?”
She held up her glass.
We could tell this was not her first drink of the evening, and likely wouldn’t be her last.
“I thought he would have been home by now,” she said. “He might be at the office.”
“No,” Virgil said. “We were just by the office.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know, then. He was supposed to have been on the afternoon train. Returning from a business trip he took to Santa Fe . . . or so he said.”
“You mean there is a chance he didn’t make the train?”
“I did not say that,” she said with a smile. “Regardless, I’m out here on the porch, having myself an aperitif.”
She held up her glass again.
“Know what sort of business trip to Santa Fe?” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a slur. “I don’t actually ever really know the ins and outs of my husband’s affairs.”
She stopped talking, as if she lost her train of thought, and stared off up the street, then turned to us and smiled. Besides her being in her cups, there was a definite detached quality to her manner as she spoke to us. Her eyes had a dead coldness.
“You fellas look as though you need some answers of some sort. Give me a question or two. Let’s see what I come up with. Answer-wise.”
“That is all right,” I said. “We’ll catch up with him as some point.”
“Oh, what is it, Marshals? Seriously. Perhaps I could be of some assistance?”
Virgil glanced to me and grinned.
“One of his hired hands,” Virgil said. “Edward Hodge stopped and paid him a visit here at your house. After the funeral.”
“And some of the other men he hired. Yes, indeed, they came by the house.”
“Know of a reason?”
“Well, see, I can be of help with that. Since Daniel was to be gone, he was giving them instructions while he’s away.”
“What sort of instructions?”
“Just to mind the candy store,” she said. “Can’t be too careful with all that is at stake in my husband’s candy-shop world. That’s a lot of gold candy.”
“Do you know where Edward Hodge and the other men are?” I said.
“Well, there you go, I can be helpful. Mr. Hodge and two of his men came by here earlier. Thought Daniel would be home by now. Likely the rest are at the mine. Watching over the candy . . . Are you sure you don’t want to join me for a drink?”
“No, thank you,” Virgil said. “And . . . that’s all. Good evening to you, Mrs. McCormick.”
“Evening, Mrs. McCormick,” I said with a nod.
We turned and started to walk away.
“What would you like me to say to him when I do see him?” she said.
“Just that we came by,” Virgil said.
“That I can do,” she said.
“Let him know we just came for a visit.”
“A visit. All right, then,” she said.
We turned and walked off. Irene let us get a good ways from the house before she spoke up.
“Is it her?” she said.
We stopped and turned.
“What’s that?” Virgil said.
“The bitch wolf?”
65
Virgil shot me a quick glance and we walked slowly toward the porch.
“Pardon?” he said.
“Is she why you want to talk with Daniel?”
“Ma’am?” I said.
“The bitch wolf said she thinks he’s trying to get rid of her, didn’t she?”
“Who?” Virgil said.
“Very clever,” she said.
She tapped her temple with her finger.
“What are you getting at?”
“Getting at? Oh, come now. No reason to beat around the bush, Marshals.”
“What are you saying, Mrs. McCormick?” I said.
“Oh, I know a thing or two,” she said.
“Like?” I said.
“And to think I was like a mother to her.”
We moved closer to the porch.
“It’s always the pretty ones, isn’t it?” she said.
She chuckled and took a sip of whiskey.
“I never really suspected a thing until a few days ago, though. Not really.”
“Suspected what?” Virgil said.
“And then I saw that look in her eye.”
“What look?” Virgil said.
“Oh, a look only a woman could understand. But I’m sure you know the look. Handsome men like you get those kinds of looks often. I’m sure.”
We edged up even closer.
“I knew of her background . . . She was a prostitute, you know. Before she married James she worked on her back. I did not find that out until later, though. She was well spoken for a whore, I will give you that, not your average streetwalker or barroom trash. She was refined. And I thought, I’ll keep quiet. Goodness gracious, everybody has to begin someplace. Me, I was lucky. I was raised to be a princess. My father was quite wealthy, you see. I was brought up with the best of the best. We were very blessed. I had my own servants growing up, three of them, actually, can you believe that? They would fuss over me let me tell you. They would dress me in the finest clothes.”
“What are you getting at?” Virgil said.
“Oh, sorry . . . Never know when you reflect you might just remember or find that nugget . . . that, that gold nugget, that seminal point in time, when you made the wrong decision . . . Listen to me, rambling on, talking about fine clothes and gold. Rambling on like a person without etiquette or a point to make . . . James fell for her and she had everyone fooled. Even me.”
“What did you mean by her being clever?”
“She turned on him,” Irene said. “Right? She rode him right where she wanted him, then she turned on him.”
“She turned on James?” I said.
“Daniel,” she said.
“She rode your husband?” I said.
“Did she ever.”
“Bernice and your husband?” Virgil said.
“All I can tell you is if anybody should be fearful for their life, it’s me.”
“Why you?” I said.
“With Daniel out of the way, I’m the bull’s-eye.”
“So Bernice and your husband are . . . ?”
“To put it bluntly,” she said. “Fornicating.”
“How do you know this?” I said.
“I know. At least they were, there is no telling what’s going to happen now. And my nephew, poor thing, he saw this, too, he witnessed them. He knows. Lord knows who else knows. But it’s clear that James was murdered, and I do not think he will be the last victim in the saga.”
“Who do you think was responsible for James’s death?”
“A million-dollar question.”
“Do you think your husband killed James?” Virgil said.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But nothing would surprise me at this point in time.”
“And her, do you think she killed her husband?” I said.
“No idea. I would like to say yes, but I don’t have a clue.”
“Before, when we talked with you in the office, you spoke of her fondly,” I said.
“That changed,” she said. “Didn’t it?”
“Now you are accusing her,” I said.
“Isn’t it funny how something copacetic can quickly become a horse of
a different color?”
She leaned forward in the rocker and lifted her rigid body out of the chair. She was not unsteady, but she was not steady, either.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said. “I am going inside to refresh my drink.”
“Certainly,” I said.
She opened the door, then leveled a look to us.
“You boys have a fine evening.”
With that, she entered and closed the door behind her.
“Well, hell,” I said.
Virgil shook his head some and we started back the way we came.
“Do you believe her?” I said.
“Whiskey talking,” Virgil said.
“There is that,” I said. “Yes.”
We walked a ways, thinking. Then we slowed to a stop and looked back to the house.
“Now what?” I said.
“Need to get Daniel,” Virgil said.
“Santa Fe?”
Virgil shook his head.
“We wait,” Virgil said.
“What about Bernice?”
“Have to talk with her,” he said.
“Confront her, you think?” I said.
“Think we have to.”
“Likely deny it.”
“Likely.”
“Allie will be . . . hell, I don’t know what Allie will be.”
“None too happy,” Virgil said.
“Maybe the two of them, Daniel and Bernice, were in cahoots,” I said. “Maybe Daniel’s wife hit the bull’s-eye thinking she is the bull’s-eye. Maybe they planned it out and murdered James. Could be like Doc said. He got poisoned on his way home, then was finished off there at his house with the ice pick.”
I pointed. We were close to James and Bernice’s place, just across the street and a few doors up from us.
“Maybe,” Virgil said.
66
We walked on, and as we neared James and Bernice’s house we did not see any sign of Weldon. He was nowhere in sight, anyway. There were no lamps lit on the porch, but there was some light coming from inside.
“Reckon she’s still out?” I said. “Maybe still with Allie?”
“Might be,” Virgil said.
“That notion don’t settle real well,” I said. “Not now, anyway, considering what was just imparted to us.”
“No,” Virgil said. “Not completely. It don’t.”
“Maybe Weldon’s inside the house with her?”
We stopped at the house.
“Want to have a look-see?”
Virgil nodded.
“We’re here.”
We walked up the steps. I knocked and after some time, Bernice McCormick’s housemaid, a young, slender woman with a light complexion, answered the door.
Virgil tipped his hat.
“How do?” he said.
She offered a demure smile.
“Hello,” she said.
“I’m Deputy Marshal Everett Hitch; this is Marshal Virgil Cole.”
“How can I help you?”
“We’re here to see Mrs. McCormick,” I said. “Is she in?”
“No, sir,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m afraid she ain’t here right now.”
“Know where we might find her?” I said.
She shook head.
“I do not,” she said.
Her accent was similar to Effie’s. She had that smooth, down-home way of speaking. But her beryl eyes had a knowing and penetrating catlike quality that did not exactly fit her southern speech.
“Much appreciated,” I said.
She smiled and nodded.
“Sure enough,” she said, and then started to close the door.
“Hold on,” Virgil said.
“Yes, sir?” she said.
“What is your name?
“Netta,” she said.
“Like to ask you a few questions, Netta.”
“Yes, sir? What is it?”
“Know this is hard, with the death of Mr. McCormick and all. But maybe you can help us figure out a few things.”
“I’ll surely try.”
“You were here at the house when James died?”
She nodded.
“I was upstairs,” she said.
“Where?”
She pointed.
“Like I say.”
Virgil glanced upward.
“Looks like a big home,” he said.
“It is.”
“What were you doing upstairs? Where were you upstairs?”
“Oh. I was just in Miss Bernice’s bedroom.”
“Doing?” Virgil said.
“Well . . . um . . . Miss Bernice, she had me pressin’ and foldin’ her linens in her bedroom. Like I do. She likes her clothes to be clean and pressed.”
“Bernice’s bedroom?” Virgil said.
“Yes, un-ha, that’s right.”
“They had separate rooms?”
“What?”
“Bernice and James have separate rooms?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
Virgil glanced to me.
“Did James have his own bedroom?” he said.
“Um,” she said, shifting her eyes, “I don’t know nothing ’bout that.”
“When was the last time you saw him here?”
“Mr. James?”
“Are there any other men in the house?”
“No, sir. No other mens in the house.”
Virgil nodded.
“When did you last see him?”
“When Mr. James leave for work that day.”
“Did you hear him come home after work?”
“Um . . . no, sir.”
“But you saw him when he died?”
Her eyes shifted between us.
“I did.”
“How was it you saw him?”
“What’cha mean?”
“Did you see him when he died, Netta?” Virgil said.
“Oh,” she said. “I did. I come down. I heard a crashin’ and I come down.”
“What kind of crashing did you hear?”
She turned and pointed behind her to the table in the entrance.
“The stuff on this here table. It come off and crashed to the floor and broke all over. I cleaned it all up like Miss Bernice say.”
“Who knocked it off the table?”
“Um. He did.”
“How do you know it was him?”
“Well, he knocked it all off and I cleaned it up.”
“You did not see him do it?”
“No, sir.”
“How did you know it was him for sure that knocked the stuff to the floor?”
“Well, Miss Bernice, she . . .”
“Told you?” Virgil said.
“That’s right,” she said.
Virgil nodded and smiled.
“There is ice in the kitchen?”
“Sir?”
“Is there an icebox in the kitchen?”
She nodded.
“Why, yes. Yes, sir. There sure is.”
Virgil smiled.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Much appreciated.”
Netta closed the door, and we walked down the steps.
“What do you figure?” I said.
Virgil shook his head as he stared off up the street without answering. He pulled a Julieta cigar from his pocket, bit the tip, then dug out a match and lit it. Once he had it going, he flicked the match to the street.
“Just don’t know, Everett.”
I glanced to the house door.
“Don’t think Bernice had a hand in it,” I said.
“No?” he said.
“I don’t,” I said.
> “What makes you say that?”
“Don’t know, just don’t.”
Virgil nodded.
“Don’t seem likely,” Virgil said. “But . . . at this goddamn point, everything seems somewhat likely.”
“Just because they managed two bedrooms,” I said, “and Irene McCormick thinks she’s fucking her husband and thinks she or they are killers, or the fact that she owns an icebox, or talked her housemaid through the story, doesn’t make Bernice the murderer.”
“No, it don’t,” Virgil said.
“One thing for certain that there is no need to lose sight of,” I said. “And that is the fact that Bernice was by God sure enough upset and angry when they loaded up her husband’s body. If she was acting, I’d say she’s a better actress than Martha Kathryn.”
67
The following morning the kid woke up hearing the faint sound of music playing somewhere in the far distance. He felt groggy and was blurry-eyed. He turned to the teamster’s wife next to him. She was on her belly and sound asleep. He sat up and looked around the room. Her dress and his new suit of clothes were tossed in a rumpled heap on the floor beside the bed. There was an empty bottle of whiskey lying sideways on the nightstand. The music stopped. He checked the time. It was already past noon. He listened for the music but heard nothing.
“Shit. The music,” he said. “The party.”
He pushed the hair out of his eyes and stumbled to the water basin.
“Wake up,” he said.
He splashed his face with handfuls of water, then turned to her. She did not budge.
“Wake up.”
She cracked open one eye.
“We don’t want to miss the damn party.”
She rolled and looked to the clock.
“I heard music,” he said.
“Do not worry,” she said with a yawn. “The party does not start for another hour.”
The kid picked up his coat and trousers from off the floor to shake out the wrinkles. He moved to the window, trying to hear the music again.
“It will be happening all the day long, till nightfall.”
“I just want to get there,” he said.
She rolled over.
“Do not panic.”
“Hell, I ain’t panicked.”
“I have something for you,” she said with a coy expression.
“No. Not now? Get up. Get dressed. Don’t you want to get to the party?”
