All the Old Lions (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book One)

by Carol Caverly

  Max raised a hand as if to stop the old man, then changed his mind and listened quietly.

  “I started the fire that burned down the general store. Had some kind of grudge against the man who owned it. Can’t even remember what it was now. The only person I told was Lil Darrow. She understood and took pity on me, knew how a young man could be carried away by what was going on around him. I just want you to know I never felt right about what happened to your grandfather. And I’m sorry for the sorrow that was caused.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” Max said, matching the old man’s dignity with a gravity of his own. “That was a long time ago. I never knew my grandfather, but I’ll gladly accept your words for his sake.”

  “That hanging’s still on the books. I’ll go along with whatever you want to do about it.”

  “I think you’ve paid a big enough price,” Max said. “My only concern now is for Minnie.”

  “Jim’s debt. We’ll take care of anything she needs.” The two men exchanged the crisp nods that seemed as useful to Westerners as aloha is to Hawaiians, and the matter was settled.

  Helby stopped to inquire about Minnie, and Max and I went back to my room so he could pick up my jeans for the Laundromat.

  “You handled Helby very well, Max,” I said. “It would have been terribly easy for you to be condescending or cruel. I’m proud of you. Could he really still be brought to trial?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s up to the district attorney to decide what cases can be legitimately brought to trial. Helby, and Potts, for that matter, were just two of ten, and I doubt if either one of them actually handled the rope. Charging a man in his seventies, or more, for a crime committed when he was fourteen boggles the mind. Would he be tried as an adult or juvenile?”

  “You’re right; I doubt if any court would want to mess with it.”

  Helby had waited to leave until Max and I returned to the lobby. We walked out together. The night air was soft, stirred by the constant breeze that rattled the leaves of the lilac hedge that bordered the parking lot. The path around the side of the building was narrow, so Helby walked briskly ahead. Max and I followed.

  Helby stepped first into the open lot. We were a few feet behind him, unseen by the man who waited. He spoke just as we passed through the opening, too late to back away.

  “Dad,” Jim said. He held a rifle which he raised when he saw Max and me, but he continued to speak, otherwise unconcerned by our presence. “Why didn’t you tell me, Dad? Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “I’m sorry, boy, but I thought it was something that would just have to eat at me ‘til I died. That hanging—”

  “Hanging!” Jim roared, swinging the rifle into firing position. “Who gives a shit about that? Why didn’t you tell me Minnie was your daughter, sweet little Minnie who isn’t really Minnie?” He spat the words out, each one loaded with more fury than the next. The reek of whisky soured the air.

  “You’re drunk,” Helby said.

  “She’s your daughter Belle; you know she is. It’s right there in the records, Dad. Cora found it. All she had to do was call Cheyenne. It was right there. A daughter born to Lil Darrow, father’s name: Helby Enright. You were fourteen, Dad. My God, that’s indecent. You let her come here to claim her share and rob our land—my land—Enright land—and make our name a laughing stock. How could you do that to me? A whore’s kid for a sister? How could you do that, Dad? We’re Enrights!”

  “Put the gun down, Jim,” Max said.

  “Stay out of this, Woolie.” He staggered and the gun wavered to cover the three of us.

  Helby moved, I think, but everything happened too quickly. Jim swung the rifle and fired. Helby cried out and sank to the pavement. I saw a flash of horror cross Jim’s face. Then Max kicked out at the rifle, but not hard enough. Jim swung the butt at Max’s shoulder, knocking him down, then ran for the dark end of the lot where his truck waited in the shadows. Max jumped to his feet and ran after him.

  I dropped by Helby’s side, but when Max moved, I took cover behind the skimpy hedge and raced unseen towards Jim’s pickup. Jim stood behind the truck’s open door and took aim at Max over the hood. I flung myself at the door just as the gun fired, smashing Jim’s arm in the hinge. He screamed, and the gun deflected upward. I fell to the ground, terrified by what I’d done, and threw myself under the truck, dimly aware of the flashing lights and screaming sirens that rolled into the lot.

  I lay there quivering, and breathed in fumes of gas and hot oil until Max drew me out and helped me to my feet.

  Deputies held Jim at bay. He didn’t struggle. Both doors of the truck were now open, and through them we watched him being cuffed and led away. Then something else caught my eye. On the floor of the truck, halfway under the seat, was a familiar paper bag.

  “This is mine,” I muttered to Max, and snatched up Minnie’s manuscript.

  Seventeen

  Helby smoothed the bent and torn frame on the portrait of Minnie and Lil, and flattened it against the kitchen table as best he could with one arm in a sling. “I had forgotten it,” he said quietly, running his fine fingers over the soiled surface. We sat in the kitchen at Halfway Halt, Helby, Max and me, drinking coffee. I’ve never drunk so much coffee in my life.

  “It was so long ago,” Helby said, repeating a phrase we’d heard many times. “I was just a kid. Lil was a good woman. She took me under her wing.”

  And into her bed, I thought. A fourteen-year-old boy, precocious, yes, but troubled as well. However, I wasn’t about to pass judgment. I did find it ironic that the young man who had impregnated a woman at the age of fourteen had remained childless until his early forties, only to become an acknowledged father again in his seventies, or whatever age he was. I hoped he would receive more pleasure from Minnie than he had from his son.

  “I knew Lil was pregnant when she left Hijax,” Helby said. “She told me the baby was mine, but I never thought much about it. We kept in touch for a while. She drifted around a bit, Deadwood, Sundance. Lil’s baby sister, Minnie, the real Minnie, died there. Diphtheria, I think it was. Lil wrote me about it and I went to see her. She loved that little sister of hers. I thought she’d go crazy.”

  “Did you see your…The other little girl then?” I asked.

  “Yes, she was just a tiny tot; Belle was her name. Lil talked a lot about starting over, thought her little sister dying was some kind of punishment. Next time I heard from her, she sent this picture and a letter from Iowa. Said she was getting business as a bookkeeper, and Minnie was doing just fine. I don’t know if she was fooling herself that Belle was Minnie, or if she thought things would be easier on the girl to be a sister rather than a daughter of an unmarried woman. I never asked.”

  “You don’t really need birth certificate verification that often in your life, and maybe even less back in the thirties and forties,” I said, pondering how difficult such a scheme would be. “When you start school, even then, certainly. If she actually used the real Minnie’s birth data, by that time the year-and-a-half age difference wouldn’t be too noticeable. Even less so as time went on.”

  Max, who had been listening quietly, spoke up. “But how did Jim come up with all this? Or Cora? It was quite a jump to make, just from seeing the date on that picture.”

  “I don’t understand Cora’s part in this at all,” I said. “When she came here to visit Minnie, she wanted to see pictures, old pictures of Halfway Halt. She wasn’t really interested in your collection, Helby.”

  Helby laughed. “Cora’s grandma was one of Lil’s girls. She probably wanted to make sure Minnie didn’t have any pictures of her grandma to put in that book.”

  “But to spot the date on that picture so quickly, and to grasp what it meant. Minnie had never really looked at the picture, but I had held it in my hands, and never noticed the date.”

  Helby shrugged. “Cora kept a pretty tight rein on the historical society, thought she was hiding a big secret, but quite a few of us remembered
. She was afraid Lamar would find out, I suspect. But none of us would have told him. He’s an outsider.”

  “Cora was familiar enough with Lil’s story,” Max said. “And you said she’d just been looking at pictures that had a two-year-old in them. Besides, she’d never seen that studio portrait before. It was too familiar to both you and Minnie to attract your attention. Sooner or later you would have noticed.”

  Helby said, “She also couldn’t figure out why I had it. That’s what made her so curious. Next day she called Cheyenne. Vital statistics. That’s what Jim told me when I talked to him at the jail.” He paused and ran a hand over his face. “I called Cheyenne myself this morning just to check, and sure enough, there’s a birth listed for Lil Darrow, child named Belle, with me as father. In those days a father’s name had to be on the certificate whether you knew who he was, or not. Cora went running to Jim with the information. She was a foolish woman.”

  “Jim said he didn’t kill Cora intentionally,” I said, though I knew it offered little comfort. “I believed him.”

  “That’s what the sheriff said. A freak hit on the temple. Killed her instantly.” He shook his head. “He could have stopped there, but chose not to.”

  He pulled the two smaller snapshots on the table closer. They were the pictures of the hanging; the vigilantes, masked and unmasked.

  “Lil took these pictures, you know. She was there that night. If I had told her then that the man was innocent she would have stopped the party. Hell, she tried to stop it anyway. Lynchin’ parties weren’t exactly admired by the ladies. Lil was the only one who ever stood up to my father, but it didn’t do any good.”

  He shoved them back towards me, and got up.

  “This man is named Beesom.” I said, pointing to one of the figures. “I even suspected the sheriff for a while, because of it. Is he a relative of Hank’s?”

  “He’s dead, now. Been gone a long time.”

  And I knew he wasn’t going to tell me anything more. After all, I too was an outsider.

  “Well, they’re yours now, girl. You can do what you want with them, I don’t care. I just came by to tell you again that I’ll take care of everything Minnie needs. She’ll never want for anything.”

  Earlier that day, the doctor had allowed the sheriff, along with Max and me, to talk to Minnie. Though she still couldn’t speak, the doctor thought her condition much improved, and she would be happier knowing that Jim had been apprehended. Much as Lil had done all her life, we, too, gave Minnie a sanitized version of events, lightening the violence and pain. But with judicious questions, and corroborative nods or shakes of her head, we were able to verify that our speculations as to what had happened to her were basically correct. The fine details would have to wait until her communication abilities improved, something which the doctor assured us would increase daily.

  Among us all there had been some kind of silent agreement that we would continue to call Minnie by the name her sister, or rather her mother, had used for her all those years. Belle had died with Minnie, and through Belle, Minnie lived.

  When Max and I were alone again, I asked, “And how about you, Max? Are you still going to try to buy this place, Minnie’s ranch?”

  “You’ve raised quite a few ghosts while you’ve been here, Thea, and I guess I’ve gotten rid of some. No, I don’t want this place, or any other. I’m not a rancher. I’m a geologist, an oil man, and that’s what I want to do. Some day, some place, I might find a piece of land I want to buy, but for different reasons. This was a pipe dream, something I had to get out of my system one way or another; I just didn’t expect it to happen so explosively.”

  His heavy-lidded eyes watched me closely, and I waited for his next words.

  “Will you stay?” he finally asked. “Or should I follow you? I can for awhile, you know, but I could never live in Chicago. What about your job?”

  Roger. Minnie’s book. My job. It all seemed so long ago; all my frenzied career urgency had been eaten up by real life.

  “I have to go back, Max. I have to edit Minnie’s book. She deserves the best job I can do.”

  I fingered the two snapshots that were never far from our reach. “I’m not going to use these, Max.” I wanted him to know the worst before things went any further. “I had planned to. In fact, I was planning a real smear campaign for Hijax. Spreads in People or the Enquirer, whatever I could get that might sell a few more books. All at the expense of the town and folks like Helby Enright, Potts, Minnie and even you, Max. I’m not real proud of myself.”

  He sat across the battered kitchen table from me, our home base for what, five days? Or was it six? The apple green walls still made their feeble attempt to provide cheer to the shabby old room. The dog, now a confirmed member of the household, lay at our feet beating the floor periodically with a happy tail. Max studied me as he had so frequently in the past few days.

  “But you aren’t going to do that; that’s what counts, Thea.”

  “Yes, I guess so. At any rate, I’ve made my decisions about Minnie’s book. It will be the story of Jersey Roo’s Halfway Halt, as we had originally planned. If at some date Minnie wants to write about Lil’s life, then that will be another book, and will wait until she can make all the decisions concerning it. But I do have to see this project through to conclusion. You understand, don’t you Max? Then I can begin editing my own life. Sort out my priorities.”

  “Am I a priority?” Max asked softly.

  “You know you are. A. Top. Number One. But if you do come with me, you’ll have to wear your cowboy boots and hat, and maybe get a bandanna. Mother will be enchanted.”

  He stood, and drew me to my feet.

  “And of course,” I said, wrapping my arms around him, “I don’t have to leave right now, this very instant. There’s always tonight.”

  His face lit with that great, glorious smile. “What’s the matter with right now?” He pulled me to him.

  “Not a thing,” I said. My lips parted under his, welcoming his embrace.

  Before You Go…

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  Page Ahead for an Excerpt From:

  FROGSKIN AND MUTTONFAT

  Frogskin and Muttonfat

  A Thea Barlow Cozy Mystery, Book 2

  Sheila Rides-Horse lay on the cot in her small room at the back of the house, her head propped up with three thin, lumpy bed pillows, the tattered quilt scrunched down around her ankles where she had pushed it to avoid the heat. She wasn’t asleep. She was sure she wasn’t asleep, but the walls of her narrow room were disappearing. She was outside, sitting on a rock. She could feel the hard ridges and uneven protuberances digging into her soft buttocks. Her large bare feet splayed firmly on the ground in front of her.

  Her thoughts stretched out into gossamer threads that sucked up the night scents, tangled with the sharp breeze, and searched for the unusual. A meaning. A message. She wasn’t frightened. She had done this before, knew how to hang on to that one piece of reality that would keep her safe.

  She focused on something between her feet. A plant? A rock? Her eyes caressed the odd shape, trying to know it, but she was puzzled. The thing had a peachy glow that spoke of succulence, yet its branches…Yes, branches. A bush, a shrub of some kind. She clung to her thoughts, gripping their solidity to ward off the sweet, fuzzy haze that shredded reason.

  Then the bush began to move. Pulsing with lif
e, the branches writhed, swayed and began to reach for her. Flesh-colored but hard as stone, the tendrils brushed her legs, curled around her arms, stretched to her neck, twining, squeezing.

  She grabbed frantically for cognition. “Fin…fingers…” but mind and breath began to swirl away. The cold reaching fingers tore at her mouth and reached for eye sockets. With a final burst of terror, she threw her head back and caught a pinprick of light. Clinging to the glow, she willed it closer and closer until it burst into shape. A light bulb hanging from a chain. Her room. Her bed.

  “Holy shit!” Sweat poured down her face and neck and between her heavy breasts. She wiped it off with the tail of the ragged T-shirt she used as a nightgown, then stared at the shirt, surprised to find it soaked through. Impatient, she yanked the clammy shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor, then stood up on rubbery legs.

  “What in hell was that all about?” she said, comforted by the sound of her voice. She had had her share of visions, but nothing with that kind of power.

  The cards, she thought. I gotta get the cards. Naked, she padded to the sink on the far wall and took down a packet wrapped in a blue velvet cloth from the shelf above.

  The cloth dropped to the floor unnoticed and with trembling fingers she began to shuffle the deck. The cards, worn to a limp softness by years of use, calmed her. Holding the deck in both hands, she touched the shuffled pack to her forehead and her heart, then sat on the edge of the bed. Fanning the cards face down on the sheet, she pressed them briefly into the dampness to soak up the fear. Quickly, she gathered them up again and began her spread.