The Sky Took Him - An Alafair Tucker Mystery

by Donis Casey

  “You’ve found a good spot,” Alafair noted to Olivia, once Grace had talked herself out and regained an interest in her popcorn. The speakers’ platform that they had watched being constructed was now draped all around in somewhat rain-bedraggled red, white, and blue bunting. Chairs for the local dignitaries had been arranged in a row behind the podium, which sported a large, red and white Oklahoma flag. Several well-dressed men were at this moment mounting the stairs and milling around the platform. Halfway up the block, where Broadway bisected Independence Avenue, Alafair could just make out the color guard waiting for the signal to begin the parade.

  “Yes, we figured we’d better get ourselves settled pretty quick if we wanted to be able to hear the governor’s speech.”

  Alafair straightened and eyed the men on the platform. “Governor Williams is here? Which one is he?”

  Olivia pointed out a man with a cleft chin who was wearing a black suit. “Nice looking, isn’t he?

  “He looks just like the picture I saw of him in the paper last January, after he got inaugurated.”

  The governor and a man whom Alafair didn’t recognize were moving toward the podium, and the other men were settling themselves in the chairs at the back. She leaned back toward Olivia. “Do you know any of those other fellows?”

  Olivia craned her neck a little to see around the men at the podium. “Well, that one in the first chair is a city councilman. I’ve seen him at Daddy’s house, but I don’t know his name. That bald man there is Mr. Debs.”

  “Eugene Debs, who ran for president last time?”

  “That’s him. He’s giving a speech tomorrow.”

  “I declare!” Alafair regarded the man for a moment. Eugene V. Debs was easily the most famous person she had ever seen. It took her a moment to realize that Olivia was still speaking to her.

  “Over there is Dr. Zollars, from Phillips University. That one there is the mayor, then Sheriff Hume, and next to him is Chief of Police John Burns.”

  “Who’s that with the governor?”

  “That’s Buck Collins. He’s one of them who made the run in ’93. His son Ellery used to be a friend of Kenneth’s. He’s going to do the introductions, I reckon.”

  Alafair straightened and unconsciously squeezed Grace tightly enough that she squeaked. The very man who caused Lester such distress! She leaned around Olivia and caught Ruth Ann’s eye before raising her eyebrows and gesturing with her head. Ruth Ann responded with a shrug and a nod of her head.

  Alafair studied the man carefully. He was talking quietly with Governor Williams, absently fingering his gold cufflinks, a perfectly pleasant expression on his face.

  Alafair leaned back toward Olivia. “Your daddy mentioned Mr. Collins to me yesterday. He sure didn’t have anything good to say about him.”

  Olivia shrugged. She didn’t appear to be surprised that her father had shared his opinion of Buck Collins with her aunt. “No, Daddy and him don’t care for one another, is a mild way to say it. A lot of bad water has run under that bridge. Mr. Collins and Daddy have had a few run-ins over the years.” She paused and gave the man on the podium a thoughtful glance. “There’s some talk that he’s a criminal.”

  “What is he doing up there at the podium if he’s a criminal?”

  Olivia gave her an ironic look. “Money and power talk loud, Aunt Alafair. Besides, he’s one of the founders, you know. You can see that he’s wearing one of those ‘I Made the Run’ buttons. Besides, he’s rich as Rockefeller, and a high mucky-muck around here. Daddy says several town officials are in his pocket. He thinks that those who are ill-used by Collins are too scared to press charges or testify either.”

  “I declare!”

  Martha, sitting on her other side, plucked her mother’s sleeve. “Look yonder, Mama. I think they’re about to start!”

  Collins stepped up to the podium and the crowd quieted. He had to practically yell in order to be heard by the throngs of people, but he managed to do it in a surprisingly dignified way. Alafair was interested to note that he had a hint of an Irish accent that was not unlike her stepfather-in-law’s. Collins welcomed everyone to the Founders’ Day Commemoration in honor of the twenty-second anniversary of the Cherokee Strip Land Run of September 16, 1893. He briefly outlined the major events that were scheduled over the next three days, and invited all to visit the exhibit of agricultural products and children’s artwork on display in the basement of the Collins Building on the corner of Randolph and Grand.

  Alafair scrutinized Collins as he introduced Governor Williams. If she had met him on the street, she would have thought Collins the finest-looking gentleman she had ever seen. She certainly would never have picked him out for a thug and a murderer. But if he was as bad as Ruth Ann and Olivia seemed to think, it was no wonder Lester was worried at the idea that Kenneth may be involved with him in some way.

  ***

  After the governor’s brief opening speech, the parade, led by a showy troop of mounted Cheyenne Indians, in the full regalia of their tribe, began the march from West Broadway. Following the Indians came the band from the town of Arnett, and then the lines of old settlers, each wearing a badge which read “I Made the Run.” The Brunswick band came next, just ahead of the Grand Army of the Republic, which made quite an impression on the crowd. The march of the schoolchildren was almost a whole parade by itself. Over two thousand pupils from Enid High School, St. Joseph Institute, and all the grade schools marched under the banner of their respective classes. The Boy Scouts followed, and floats representing Phillips University, headed by the university band, and the University Hospital. Practically every business in town had contributed a float, from the Union Motion Picture Operators to the Kennedy Mercantile Company to Enid Electric and Gas.

  The Yeager Transfer and Storage float was decked out with a moving van and a cutaway storage unit, filled with crates, employees, and machinery. The bright red hook and ladder from the city fire department was covered with pretty decorations, and firemen in their helmets and blue uniforms hung off the sides of the truck, waving at the crowds.

  The people were several rows deep and standing out in the street close to the marchers. Olivia and Ruth Ann both grew hoarse from calling out to people they knew in the parade.. Grace set a new record for the use of her favorite word, and it was all Alafair could do to keep her from dashing out to join whatever group or float was passing by at the moment. Alafair didn’t blame her. She was entirely impressed by the pageant herself.

  Anxious to get back to Lester, Ruth Ann left before the parade was over, for it was so long that nearly two hours passed before the last horse made its high-stepping entrance onto the square. It was a beautiful horse, all tricked out with a Mexican silver saddle, but by that time, Alafair’s senses were so overwhelmed that she barely noticed. The sky had clouded up again, and it was beginning to sprinkle, and she had had about enough excitement for one day. The girls and McCoy had wandered down the block to socialize with some of Olivia’s friends, leaving Alafair with an overstimulated, exhausted, and cranky Grace. “I want candy!” the child was wailing. “I want a fried pie. I want to go!”

  “I think you really want a nap,” Alafair told her, to which suggestion Grace responded by wailing even louder.

  Alafair picked her up and elbowed through the throngs toward Martha, who turned to meet her.

  “I’m taking Grace back to the house,” Alafair told her. “She needs a nap, and I want to see if I can help Ruth Ann with Lester.”

  Martha nodded. “Streeter is going to his office, and Olivia has invited me to come over to her house. I thought I would, unless you think I can be of some help back at Aunt Ruth Ann’s.”

  “What about little Ron?”

  “Olivia seems to think he’ll be fine with Lu for an hour or two more. She said he’s taking a little cereal with goat’s milk, now.”

  “All right then, honey, you go on. I expect Olivia could use some distracting, as well.”

  Alafair walked back to the
Yeager house, glad to get out of that milling, noisy crowd, even if she did have to drag a whiney child all the way. At least that was one sound that she was capable of tuning out, thanks to long years of practice.

  She managed to get Grace upstairs by promising to tell her a story, and the girl had calmed down by the time her mother tucked her into the little pink daybed. “I liked the parade, Mama.”

  “I know you did, punkin. So did I. I sure am tired though. I bet you are, too.”

  Grace ignored the hint. “I don’t think it’s cold in here.”

  “No, it’s pretty warm. I’ll open a window.”

  “That man’s pretty silly.”

  “What man is that, cookie?”

  Grace turned over on her side and clutched her dolly to her chest. “That man I saw in the sky. He had wings on his neck.”

  Alafair’s hands hesitated on the window sash. She looked back over her shoulder at the girl in the daybed. “Wings on his neck? Like an angel?”

  A brief look of disdain passed over Grace’s face. “No, not big wings like an angel, Mama. Little wings, on his neck.” She demonstrated by sticking her hands out akimbo on either side of her head and wagging her fingers.

  “What did he say, Mr. Wing-Neck?” Alafair asked.

  Grace laughed at the appellation. “Mr. Wing-Neck said he’s very cold.”

  “Did he say where he is that it’s so cold, sugar?”

  Grace snuggled down on the pink sheet. “He’s nowhere, Ma. He’s in the sky.”

  It really wasn’t cold in the room, but a chill went through Alafair just the same. “That was just a dream, honey,” she said. But Grace was already asleep.

  ***

  Olivia’s house was only two blocks from her mother’s, straight down Elm Avenue to just past Kenwood. The Crawford house was much smaller than the Yeager manse, but it was still larger than the house that Martha had grown up in, with its large airy parlor, two big bedrooms with actual built-in closets, and a study for Kenneth. Not to mention a kitchen and bathroom with indoor plumbing.

  Martha had been to Olivia’s wedding a couple of years ago, but had never seen her house. Olivia treated her to a tour before seating her at the kitchen table, which was the proper place for a relative. While she bustled about making coffee, retrieving dishes and silverware and half a leftover white cake from the pantry, Olivia filled her cousin in on her husband’s latest business undertaking.

  “After Daddy got sick, Kenneth took money from the shipping business and bought himself a quarter-section of land out south of Garber, along with the mineral rights. He’s sure that there’s a big pool of oil just waiting to be found somewhere around Enid, and he took a notion that his field is the place. Enid’s gotten to be a big oil and gas distribution center in the past few years, and they’re already building a pipeline and a refinery. The Sinclair Company sunk some wells outside of Garber. That gave Kenneth the idea he could make a big strike, and all our troubles would be over.

  “So when a doodlebugger came through last year, Kenneth got him to run his oil-finding machine over the ground out there. The man told Kenneth that his doodlebug machine made it possible for him to see right through the ground like it was water, and that he’s sitting on a big oil deposit. He paid the man twenty-five dollars for this hogswollop! I didn’t like any of it. I told Kenneth that maybe there’s oil on his land and maybe there isn’t, but that swindler sure didn’t know which it was. But Kenneth believed him like he was Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John all rolled into one, and has mortgaged us to the hilt to hire a crew and put in a well.

  “Daddy was upset that Kenneth hadn’t even talked to him before he went off on this ridiculous jag. Well, there wasn’t much we could do about it after the money was spent, but at least Daddy fixed it with Mr. Lawyer so Kenneth can’t use the Yeager Transfer and Storage Company funds for anything but the business any more. Mike Ed keeps a close eye on the books for Daddy, so I know Kenneth hasn’t drunk from that well again.”

  She cut a couple of pieces of the white cake and poured some coffee before she joined Martha at the table, took a bite of cake, and continued.

  “I didn’t like to mention it to him, but if he was so all-fired determined to put in some wells, he’ll have all the money he wants when Daddy dies. What worries me is that he’s gone ahead and hired a crew and partnered up with a wild-looking fellow called Pee Wee Nickolls, who drives those twisters like a teamster drives mules. They’ve been drilling for a couple of months, but it looks like it’s going to take forever, if they’re lucky enough to strike oil at all.

  “They keep running out of money and having to stop for several days until they can scare up more funds. This Nickolls is crazy as a bedbug. Doesn’t care about anything but his well. He’s worked the oil fields all his grown-up life. He’s a shooter—a nitro man. He blasts out the oil sands in the wells with nitroglycerin. I’ve heard from more than one that he’s the best there is, but that’s hard to believe from looking at him. He only has a thumb and forefinger on his right hand, a patch on his right eye, and burn scars.”

  Martha laughed at her description. “Well, I’ve known a couple of shooters in my time, and most of them are missing some kind of body part. Have you met this fellow yourself?”

  “Oh, yes, several times. A young fellow. He’s polite enough and all.”

  “But is he any good at finding oil?”

  A golden brown strand of hair had come loose from Olivia’s coif, and she tucked it behind her ear. “Kenneth tells me he’s one of the best, but I don’t know how he’d know. I hope he is, because Kenneth has gone in with Nickolls fifty-fifty. He couldn’t do it alone. He doesn’t have the money or the know-how. And I don’t know where they’re getting the money to keep the operation going, now. Kenneth won’t tell me anything. I keep a weather eye on our finances, and nothing has gone missing. I’m afraid he’s getting it from Buck Collins, who has probably asked him to do a couple of ‘favors’ in return.”

  “The Buck Collins who spoke before the parade this morning? Streeter said he’s the one who built the Collins Building over on the northeast corner of the square.”

  “That’s him. For the last year or so, Kenneth has been keeping company with Ellery Collins, Buck’s youngest son. That’s why I’m thinking Kenneth may be involved with the old man. I’m sure he’s met him through Ellery.”

  “Well, what kind of favors do you think Kenneth is doing for such a man?”

  “I’d think smuggling spirits. It would be quite a money-making proposition in a dry state like Oklahoma. Kenneth is in the shipping business, after all. It’d be a handy racket on the side for him.”

  “You know he’s doing this?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But before it got outlawed altogether in the United States this year, Kenneth and Ellery and a bunch of boys used to get together one or two nights a week at Buck’s big house and play cards and drink absinthe. I kind of liked Ellery. He’s sort of sad and funny at the same time. Him and his dad don’t get along, I hear. But it was Ellery who put Kenneth on to the absinthe. Ellery made regular trips up to Kansas to bring it in, just half-a-dozen bottles at a time, or a case, for his private use, he said. Everybody knew it, but Sheriff Hume never managed to catch him at it.

  “I asked Kenneth straight out if there was more to it than that, if he was selling it, too. Told him I wouldn’t appreciate being the wife of a criminal. He acted all insulted and denied it up and down. I’m hoping that since the whole U.S. government has banned it now, it’s too difficult to stay in the absinthe business.”

  Martha was shocked. “Liquor is one thing, but that absinthe will make you insane!”

  “Well, it doesn’t make everybody insane. Kenneth sure likes it and went to some disturbing lengths to get it when he could. I think there’re a lot of people that are of the same mind about it. And if it isn’t absinthe, there’s plenty of other illegal spirits that dishonest folks will pay money for, though. I know my Kenneth. He wants to be a good husba
nd and father, wants to provide for us, but I fear he’s not long on scruples.”

  Martha hesitated a moment before she responded. “I hope you won’t be insulted when I say I never thought Kenneth was really suited to the shipping business. But I surely never thought he was crooked! What makes you think so?”

  Olivia shrugged. “I’m not insulted. Kenneth never thought he was particularly suited to the shipping business either. Since Daddy got so bad he had to give up going in to the office, Mike Ed Beams has been keeping me up on things. A couple of times during the last month, the teamsters have told him there were some crates in the warehouse that weren’t on the shipping manifests. But by the time Mike Ed got down there to see what was what, the extra crates had disappeared, and nobody seems to know anything about them.”

  She put down her fork, upset by her own story. “In fact, I’m pretty scared, Cousin Martha. I can’t think of any other way Kenneth could keep getting money except from doing bad things for Collins. And if he has his claws into Kenneth, then I’m afraid we’re up a creek. Even if that oil well comes in big and Kenneth pays him back every nickel he borrowed, Buck Collins will find some way to take the well from him. And if Kenneth used them as collateral, Collins could take our house and probably our share of the warehouse.”

  Martha grasped Olivia’s arm across the table. “Oh, Olivia, I’m so sorry. I had no idea it was so bad. Have you talked to your parents about this?”

  “No. Mama wouldn’t have any idea what to do, and I don’t know what Daddy could do, now. Besides, I don’t want to send him to his rest with this worry on his soul.”

  “What about a lawyer, Olivia? Surely you could at least get some legal advice.”

  Olivia shrugged. “I’ve thought about it, though I haven’t done it yet. My father’s lawyer, Russ Lawyer, is a good man, and he hates Buck Collins like poison. But can I go behind my husband’s back? The truth is I have no proof that Kenneth is in debt to Buck Collins. Even if I did, I don’t know if any lawyer would even talk to me about my husband’s business without his permission.”