The Murder Megapack

by Talmage Powell

  He hung up. Minutes sped past.

  “Anita, baby,” he said huskily. “We’d better hunt your clothes. Not that I—well—Hell! Those cops’ll be here as fast as they can make it, Damn ’em!”

  SLUGS ALONG THE MOHAWK, by Ted Stratton

  Originally published in 10-Story Detective, July, 1943.

  The white-haired old man sprawled on the red clay between the peach trees in Lias Mullen’s orchard inched forward until he lay surrounded by the rich, lustrous leaves of a double row of blackberry vines. Then he rested.

  The sun burned the thick neck above his faded shirt collar. Rivulets of perspiration coursed down his dusty face and stained the blue shirt with darker splotches of moisture. His parched mouth ached for relief and he glanced at the thickly tangled briers. Purplish fruit hung suspended in clusters.

  Jeb’s eyes glistened. He knew all about these juicy berries. They were a hybrid strain, and the talk of Bedminster Township, because they ripened earlier than any other variety in the valley. The thirsty man picked a berry as large as his thumb, moistened his tongue. The juices were sourish-sweet, thirst-quenching. Avidly he took another. When he had consumed several handfuls, a door latch clicked.

  Instantly alert, Jeb watched the low single-story house. A burly man in patched overalls rounded the corner. He carried a tin bucket, headed for a stone well curb. Jeb’s mouth hardened. Lias Mullen, the local bloodsucker…

  From the soft clay where it had rested, Jeb lifted and leveled the rifle. The sun glanced off the barrel and dazzled his eyes. Since the rifle was a single shot and he dared not miss, Jeb waited patiently until Lias finished drawing water. The thick-set man straightened, his beefy face squarely across the sights. Jeb squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle jumped. A puff of smoke obscured the target, but Jeb waited with the sure confidence of a hunter who could hit a squirrel at fifty yards. Burned powder stung his nostrils, tickled his throat, yet he did not mind. When the well came into view again, Jeb saw what he had expected. Lias was slumped against the spout, hands upflung along the rough stones. Slowly the body slipped, fell with a thud. Lias lay very still.

  Jeb relaxed and stood up. Coming from his concealment, Jeb approached the prostrate Lias. The man was dead, drilled neatly behind the left ear. Blood still trickled into the coarse, black neck hairs. Water from the spilled bucket lisped and chuckled as it ran over the edge of the wooden platform.

  “Lias,” Jeb said in a low monotone, “I reckon your bloodsucking days is over. Can’t say as you’ll collect any mortgage money from me. My sweat won’t drop on this stubborn clay so’s I can scrape out twelve percent interest to pay you. From now on, Lias, I aim to farm debt free. And in peace.”

  The speech completed, Jeb entered the deserted house. The mortgage and the interest which Jeb had paid last week would be stowed in one of three places, none of which would be the Bedminster Bank. At the fireplace Jeb tested each stone. None was loose. He surveyed the spool bed with its gaudy patchwork quilt—the handiwork of the late Mrs. Mullen—but drew a blank when he searched the ticking.

  That left the third place, the only one where Jeb had ever heard of a local man hiding money. A ten-minute search through the crockery in the pantry drew a third blank. Stumped momentarily, Jeb eyed a stubby jug alongside the clock on the mantel. In the bottom of the jug Jeb found the thirty-six dollars and the mortgage.

  “Trusted us,” Jeb mused aloud, “more ’n we trusted him.”

  His big-knuckled fingers closed around the money, his again and by rights. “Who but me,” he said grimly, “has a right to demand and collect the interest Lias claimed? Once over I paid this mortgage in interest and now it’s mine.”

  Stowing the bills and mortgage in a back pocket, Jeb picked up his rifle and went outdoors. Four miles away, a hazy ridge of hills provided a backdrop toward which rolled the scattered farms of the upper Raritan River valley. The nearest farm, that of Ray Tucket, was a good mile distant. The lazy countryside lay in deep sleep, except for desultory cackle music from Lias’ hens and the faint bay of a lonesome hound.

  Suddenly Jeb started, listened. He heard the chug-chug of a car on the long farm drive to Lias’ house. “Job’s done,” Jeb muttered. “Best to get back. Only I didn’t figure nobody finding the body quite so soon.”

  Bending low, he skirted the well and kept behind the cover of a row of unkempt spirea bushes until he reached the barn. Peering from behind a screen of locust, Jeb watched Harry Vanarsdale’s topless touring car raise dust along the road. Then, swiftly and noiselessly, Jeb turned and made his way through a wood lot downhill to Primrose Creek. He followed a faint path upstream. Into the deepest part of the shaded hole where he’d caught the four-pound bass last summer, Jeb tossed the rifle.

  Fifteen minutes later he unhitched his horse from a snake fence bordering his orchard. “Giddap,” he shouted at Daisy, the bay mare. “Giddap,” he repeated. Disregarding the horse’s gender, he added: “You lazy old good-for-nothing son-o’-Satan!”

  The mare ambled off between the rows of young peach trees, while the spike-toothed harrow followed and currycombed the soil. A half hour later a car rattled into the yard and wheezed to a stop. Two men whom Jeb identified as the sheriff and Abe Norton, a deputy, got out.

  “Quick work,” Jeb murmured thoughtfully. “Vanarsdale musta skedaddled when he found Lias!” Unhurriedly Jeb followed Daisy to the row’s end, then walked over to the car.

  “Afternoon,” Jeb said. “Figuring to set awhile?”

  Abe Norton looked meaningly at the sheriff. Thus prodded, the sheriff spoke.

  “Cultivatin’ some, Jeb?”

  “You got eyes,” Jeb answered. He stood quietly, eyeing the two uneasy men, and rubbing a calloused palm over the three-day growth of stubble on his chin.

  “How’s she gonna crop up?” the sheriff continued.

  “Moderate.”

  “Bugs bad this way, Jeb?”

  “Ain’t eyed many.”

  Abe shifted restlessly. “Now you listen here, sheriff,” he complained, “I ain’t aiming to rot here till Christmas while you and Jeb work your jaws. Speak your piece and—”

  “Abe,” the sheriff interrupted, “shut up. I’m a-hurryin’, ain’t I?”

  The sheriff, a long sliver of man with leathery cheeks and sorrowful brown eyes, studied Jeb, then asked: “Fall-plantin’ that ten-acre field of your’n?”

  “Maybe,” Jeb said. “What’s a-riling Abe?”

  The sheriff took a long breath. “There’s been a killin’.”

  “You don’t say!” Jeb squinted. “What’s it this time, another stranger?”

  “Lias Mullen,” Abe broke in. “Shot behind the left ear, he was.”

  “Ain’t murder then,” Jeb said easily. “Just common sense. Know a dozen men hereabouts ’ud like to gun Lias.”

  “Know it as well as you,” the sheriff said softly. “But the law’s been broke and I gotta act. Been workin’ here all day, Jeb?”

  “Not yet. It’s three hours to sundown.”

  “Evading won’t help, Jeb. I been to Ray Tucket’s soon as I got Harry Vanarsdale’s call. I’m questioning every man in the valley. You work here all day?”

  “Harrers don’t run theirselves, sheriff. And that Daisy—sure is a good mare, only she don’t work none by her lonesome.”

  “Anybody to witness that?”

  Jeb stiffened. “Lived here twelve years,” he said, spacing the words evenly. “Ain’t nobody ever doubted my word.”

  Still unruffled and unhurried, the sheriff repeated his question: “You been workin’ here since morning?”

  Jeb snorted. “You got eyes!” Then he stepped closer, a thin-hipped lanky man with out-thrust jaw. “A man ’ud think you’re a-charging me with Lias’ murder, if you call it that.”

  “Maybe.” The sheriff turned to Abe. “Fetch Jeb’s gun.”

  Jeb watched Abe enter the weather-beaten shack. Then he set himself to thinking. The sheriff had got here quick.
Still, there was no danger. Carefully he rechecked his plans. Nobody had seen him enter the blackberry patch, nor watched him drill Lias. And the rifle shot could belong to anybody—a kid in the woods, or somebody gunning a woodchuck or squirrel. People didn’t trouble themselves in these parts about a rifle shot.

  Abe fetching the hunting rifle wouldn’t matter, either. The rifle which had killed Lias had been bought secondhand over to Pottersville three years ago and nobody had ever seen it in Jeb’s house. What about his tracks between his own house and Lias’? Maybe the sheriff would go for hounds, expecting to follow the trail. Jeb smiled inwardly. Let the hounds try. It was behind the barn that Jeb had rubbed garlic on his boot soles!

  No, Jeb decided, there was no danger of discovery. There were a dozen men in the upper valley who would like to get Lias between rifle sights—provided no questions would be asked afterward!

  The door opened and Abe walked out, carrying a rifle.

  Jeb eyed the deputy sourly. “Carry that gun right,” he advised Abe. “It ain’t used to being handled by strangers.”

  Abe handed the rifle to the sheriff who asked: “When you fire this last, Jeb?”

  “Sunday, over by Hogback Ridge.”

  The sheriff examined the rifle, handed it back to Abe. Then he said sadly: “Well, Jeb, let’s get goin’ to town.”

  A tense silence settled over the three men. Nobody moved, not even when Daisy whinnied loudly. A shiver gathered in the small of Jeb’s back and worked along his spine. Suddenly his fingers tingled.

  “Now, sheriff,” he protested, “you can’t pack me off like this. I got that orchard to work.”

  The sheriff said nothing, just stood eyeing Jeb carefully. The silence upset Jeb. “You can’t arrest me, sheriff,” he snapped angrily. “Judge Somerville won’t hold me ten minutes, ’less you got proof or witnesses.”

  Under the impact of the sheriff’s steady stare, Jeb quieted down. Fear pulsed up his backbone with the rapidity and force of an electric current. Numbness crept around inside his body. He waited. There was nothing else to do.

  “Nobody liked Lias Mullen,” the sheriff said finally. “But nobody gunned him till you did, Jeb.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense—” Jeb began.

  “You’re guilty,” the sheriff interrupted. “When you was waitin’ to shoot Lias you made one mistake. You know how blackberries stain. That beard you’re wearin’, Jeb—it ain’t white, it’s purple!”

  MURDER ISN’T EVERYTHING, by Kingsley Smith

  Originally published in Short Stories, September 1946.

  She came out of the door of the big apartment house in a rush, half running to the curb where I had parked my convertible. As she climbed in beside me, I had a whiff of a delicate but very definite scent. While I was getting the car under way, I turned for a deliberate look at her flushed, excited face. I was a little excited myself. A male who can gaze on Janet Gordon without some such feeling is either senile or queer; thank heaven, I am neither.

  “You’re the most beautiful accomplice I’ve ever had on a murder story,” I said.

  “Thank you for noticing it, Mr. Dawson,” she replied, immodestly.

  “Thank you for calling me George from now on—Janet. Two reporters working together can’t afford all that formality. Are you nervous, or is that just natural vivacity busting out all over?”

  “I’m scared,” she confessed. “This is the first important story I’ve ever been sent on—and working with you, too. Of course, that’s a thrill in itself.”

  “It’s nice of you to cut me in,” I said, “even though I did get secondary billing. But relax; this job isn’t going to be so tough.”

  I took my right hand off the wheel long enough to pat her, ever so gently, on the shoulder. She didn’t seem to mind.

  “There are cigarettes in the glove compartment,” I said. “Why don’t you light one for each of us?”

  As she handed me mine, we came to the last arterial stop in West Lakeville and I turned the car onto Highway 13, the main paved road between Lakeville and Littleton, about 100 miles away. It was a brilliant May morning, and the countryside glistened with spring greenery.

  Janet exhaled smoke, and then drew a large breath of unadulterated country air.

  “What a day!” she said. “I certainly do admire your choice of weather.”

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  She laughed, and it was a good, throaty, gusty laugh.

  “That’s the quickest switch from the weather I’ve ever seen a conversation take,” she said. “I am twenty-two years old, five feet, six inches tall, weigh 118 pounds, and have never been turned down for insurance.”

  “And the way those inches and pounds are distributed,” I said, “I don’t believe you’d be turned down by John Robert Powers, either.”

  She took the compliment without comment.

  “There’s no future in modeling,” she said. “I was going to try to be an actress, but after—after Daddy died, I had to earn some money and Mother wanted me to stay in Lakeville, so I got a job on the Journal.”

  “Do you think there’s a future in that?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said defensively, “I do. Mr. Mason says I show promise, and I like to work hard.”

  I knew what Mason meant, but I didn’t say so. It was no part of my job to suppress the youthful enthusiasm in this pert, pretty blonde creature with baby-blue eyes and upswept curls. I had heard Mason grumbling the day the Old Man called him in and told him to put Janet on the staff and I knew that everybody in the place felt she owed her job solely to the fact that she had been Tad Gordon’s daughter.

  It might have been a mistake to give her the job, but it was certainly no more than Tad Gordon deserved. He was the closest we ever came to a great reporter on the Journal—a powerful hulk of a man who had covered two wars with distinction, who had added luster to our Washington bureau, and had come home to die after doing a brilliant undercover series on conditions in postwar Europe. His widow had been left with Janet and a few insurance policies overburdened with loans.

  In spite of her fresh, vibrant youthfulness, I felt sorry for the kid. To make any headway, she’d have to accomplish twice as much as anybody else on the same job, and from what I’d heard, I was not at all sure that she could do it.

  “Do you know anything about this murder?” I asked her.

  “Only what Mr. Mason told me on the phone this morning. Do you?”

  “About the same, I guess. A guy named Frank Turner was found shot to death in his house in Littleton this morning. He was a real estate dealer, 45 to 50 years old. He had lived in the town only about two years and never had any trouble that the police knew of. Nobody arrested yet, but I understood Harrity has a couple of suspects.”

  “Who’s Harrity?” she asked.

  “Harrity,” I said, “is the first guy we go to see. He’s the chief of police in Littleton. Rugged old character. Not too old at that, I guess—55 or so. Loves to talk. He can drink a gallon of whiskey in a day without showing it. He used to be head dick on the force, and never took a nickel. When the reform crowd got in, they made Jess chief because he was about the only honest cop they could find around. Now they’re all honest, because if the boys start to play, Jess knocks their heads together. There hasn’t been much crime in Littleton since Jess took over. He really hates crooks.”

  I looked around and saw that Janet was eating it up.

  “Harrity sounds wonderful,” she said. “So do you. I am beginning to see what it takes to be a reporter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well—I can see you have to be interested in people like Harrity, and know a lot about them, and understand what makes them tick, in order to find out what they know. Just as you must have to know a lot about politicians and lobbyists, and their motives, to handle that investigation of the highway bill you’ve been working on.”

  “Let’s not talk about that,” I said. “I’m on a vacation from that—and mig
hty glad of it.”

  I had been trying to dig up a scandal for the Old Man—Arthur Cranston, publisher of the Journal—in connection with the Legislature’s passage of a $27,000,000 highway improvement bill. We were pretty sure some palms had been crossed because the bill went through just about the way the cement companies and the road machinery manufacturers wanted it, but I hadn’t been able to prove anything yet, although I had some leads that I was going nuts trying to follow. Mason gave me the murder assignment because he knew I was going stale on the political investigation.

  “You need a change of pace,” he said, “and so does the Journal. We aren’t going to sell any papers with this political stuff until we get the lowdown on somebody.”

  It was all right with me. I hadn’t been on a crime story for years, but at the moment solving a murder case seemed simple by comparison with the problem of getting through the labyrinth laid down around the highway improvement bill.

  Besides, here I was out in the open air, rolling along through beautiful country with a mighty attractive girl who seemed to like me. It was too good to be true, of course. About the time I was feeling most set up about the whole thing, Janet called my attention to a big sedan pulled up beside the road about 200 feet ahead of us. As I slowed down, I saw that it carried license plate No.2. This meant it was an official state car. When we drew alongside it, a plump, dapper little man arose from the running board and came toward us. We recognized each other at the same instant.

  “Hello, Dooley,” I said. “Are you out studying the fauna of our great state, or trying to figure out how much cement can be used to double the width of this road?”

  The guy was Dooley Williams, confidential secretary to Governor Anderson and generally credited with having log-rolled the highway bill through the Legislature. He was one of the key figures in my investigation, but I hadn’t been able to pin anything definite on him yet. Jovial, as he invariably was with reporters, he ignored my crack about cement and smiled his big, golden smile. “Well, Dawson,” he said, “this is my lucky day after all.” He turned his smile on Janet. “Of course, if this is an elopement, I’ll wait for another car to come along.”