Mild West Mysteries: 13 Idaho Tales of Murder and Mayhem

by Conda Douglas

  “You saw Anna,” George Singh, the Sikh policeman, said.

  “I saw purple,” I said. I took off my repaired glasses and pointed them at George. “You know how far I can see?” I tapped the edge of the desk. “Not this far.”

  George Singh patted at his turban secured by a tiny scimitar clasp. “Purple?”

  “Anna loves purple so Anna wears purple,” I said, quoting Anna’s reply when I asked her why all her saris where that brilliant shade. “That’s all I could see.”

  “Ah,” George Singh said. He folded his hands over his suit vest. The chair engulfed his sparse and short body.

  The Singapore police wore white gloves while directing traffic, the white glinting in the sun. No dirty hands for the Singapore police, no bribes, no missing records. Murder was rare in Singapore, and dirty.

  “I suppose you want a quick arrest? No matter who’s guilty?” I goaded. I wanted to ruffle the policeman’s feathers, or his turban, rather.

  George Singh re-tucked a fold of his turban. “We only bring her in for questioning,” he said.

  In Singapore, a “benevolent dictatorship,” I suspected a blurring of the line between questioning and arrest.

  “And she did direct you to the Raffles,” he continued.

  “She would not direct me to the Raffles to witness her fleeing a murder,” I said.

  “Yes, that is a question.”

  I stood up and tried to pull my sweat-soaked skirt away from my legs. A doubt in the policeman’s mind about Anna’s guilt was all I could do, for now. I left the police station and headed for a slice of home.

  The US Club, a tiny wedge in the multi-cultured delicacy called Singapore, thundered as bowling balls rolling down lanes. I ordered a tomato beer at the bar. A concoction of half tomato juice, half American beer, passed for the Singapore version of the working man’s drink. I took a couple of sips before Judy jostled my elbow as she clambered onto another bar stool.

  “They’ve arrested Anna,” she said.

  I didn’t correct her. I wasn’t about to tell her that I had been at the police station and then spent the next hour detailing my talk with George Singh.

  “The gossip on the chorus line says she killed Budgie,” Judy continued. The chorus line was the daily batch of sun worshippers, rigger widows like her, who lay in sun chairs along the club’s outdoor pool.

  “You were at Raffles today,” I said.

  “Sure, shopping,” Judy said. When she saw the look on my face, she snapped, “You think I did it? Why arrest Anna? Because she murdered Budgie.”

  “Why would she murder Budgie?”

  “Oh, that’s easy.” Judy said. “Budgie and Anna were sleeping together.”

  “What? No.”

  Judy nodded. “It’s a tradition here for amahs to sleep with their masters. And when Budgie worked for AmericonTran, he had Anna as his amah.”

  “I didn’t know he worked for AmericonTran,” I said. How well had Judy known him?

  “Retired early on a pension, which he proceeded to drink. He was a professional expatriate.”

  “Expats, the bane of Singapore,” said the oil queen behind us.

  Judy spilled some of her drink.

  The oil queen’s husband, a vice-president at AmericonTran, had his office perched on the top of the largest skyscraper in Singapore. As he lorded over the riggers, so the oil queen ruled their wives. From a distance, the oil queen looked like a plump twelve-year-old. Up close carved crevices showed around her mouth.

  I sensed Judy’s back go stiff as the oil queen slid onto a bar stool.

  “They’ve made an arrest,” the oil queen said. “That’s Singaporean efficiency for you, not like in the States.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s guilty,” I said.

  “Maybe it does,” Judy said.

  I looked at her and she avoided my gaze. Why were these women so eager to have the murder solved?

  “Bad for AmericonTran’s image,” the oil queen answered my unspoken question. “Besides, they’ve got eyewitnesses.”

  Now it was my turn to avoid Judy’s gaze. The chorus line would have Anna convicted and executed before nightfall.

  “Anna doesn’t know her place. Too friendly,” said the oil queen.

  “She works for you, too?” I asked. I’d never thought to ask Anna who her employers on other days than mine were.

  “Yes, until today,” the woman said.

  “I know she’s innocent,” I said, “and I’m going to find out who killed Budgie.” With that, I abandoned Judy and the oil queen’s conversation of condemnation.

  I waited at the bus stop. I had found only more questions and no answers. The temptation to head back to the comfort of my editing machine almost overwhelmed me. Film’s easier than people. It can be edited.

  On schedule, the monsoon clouds cauled the city in grey. The bus riders all fluttered hand held fans, providing their own air conditioning. The fans beat to the pulse of the thrumming insects. Everyone and everything waited for the storm to break.

  In film, everything syncs to a subtle internal rhythm. The rhythm of Singapore, the heartbeat of this city, remained a mystery to me. And I had lost my guide, Anna.

  Why was I thinking of work? Any answers would be found at the Raffles.

  * * *

  “What about his parakeets?” I asked the hotel manager.

  He had refused my request to see Budgie’s apartment, with a definite, “No. Police, only.”

  “Who’s taking care of them?” I asked now.

  In answer he handed me a tiny key.

  This time, instead of their usual gregarious eruptions of movement and sound, the parakeets huddled together on their perches. Did they know their master was dead and was their fluffed up, subdued manner, mourning? Then I saw that the birds’ water and food containers stood empty.

  As I filled the containers, the birds chirruped encouragement. Several editions of Singapore’s newspaper lay at the bottom of the cage. One corner of paper stood torn and lifted and I glimpsed something wrapped in plastic beneath.

  I pulled the package from underneath the newspapers. Inside were letters. I scanned the top one through the plastic. “My husband will be out of town, no one will know. Every moment away from you is agony,” it read. I pulled the letters out and fanned through them. Several different hands wrote the letters. Some read like the first, but others contained a different sort of heartfelt message: “I can get you the money soon, please, please wait before you tell him.” That letter was signed Judy.

  “You’ve found them,” said Judy, from the shadows. She came out into the sunlight, carrying her child’s basket.

  “Yes,” I said. If she killed—no, I couldn’t see her carrying her infant with one hand and killing Budgie the blackmailer with the other.

  She sighed and set the basket down. Within the child stirred.

  “It’s tough when your husband spends months on an oil rig. It was just one night. I’ve paid for it ever since. If only I hadn’t written those letters.”

  “So why did you?”

  “He wrote to me first, it seemed so romantic, so old-worldly, so…Singapore.”

  “How’d you pay him off for so long?”

  “One thing about Budgie, he never got greedy. And he had other victims,” she said and nodded at the letters in my hand. “Trouble is things have never been better between me and my husband. Guess I took a while to get settled in here. And now,” she stopped and stared down at her child.

  I sorted her letters from the others and gave them to her.

  * * *

  “Missy, taxi is too expensive!”

  Anna and I stood on the steps of the police station. The monsoon clouds waited overhead, hanging suspended in the sky, obese actors needing a cue to pour forth their fury.

  “Anna, it’s going to rain any minute and I can afford a taxi. And my name’s Beth. Come on.” I hailed a taxi and guided her to it. Beneath my hand her arm felt made of glass.

>   I wanted to ask Anna about what the policeman had told me. Only, scrunched up in the corner of the taxicab seat, she reminded me of the parakeets huddled on their perches.

  When I showed George Singh the letters he had asked me how I managed to find them.

  “The newspaper was lifted from when the murderer removed her letters,” I had said.

  “Or the birds did it,” he said.

  “Still, it shows that someone else had a motive. So, what reason would Anna have for murder? That she used to work for the man?”

  He had told me.

  “Anna,” I said now, “why did you send me to the optometrist in the Raffles Hotel?”

  “You no like him?”

  “No, he was excellent. But—”

  Anna said nothing for a moment, an exhausted budgie, tired of fighting against the storm. “Okay, I tell you,” she said. “I get paid a commission for the recommendations to him, and others. My American bosses, like you, they need services, they ask me. Simple, yes?”

  Simple.

  The towering skyscrapers looked dirty in the monsoon, tall priests worshipping the main god of Singapore: capitalism. What could be more natural than Anna as a shill? And did you pander to the lonely ladies of the US Club? I wanted to ask her. Was it a falling out of blackmailers?

  As we pulled up to Anna’s high rise home, the first big lazy drops splashed on the windshield.

  “Beth, your laundry,” Anna said.

  “Never mind, I’ll get it.”

  “But I hung my saris on the line. They’ll run and you’ll have purple underwear.”

  How could Anna not be innocent if she worried about such a thing now?

  “I like purple underwear.” Another piece of film fell into place: a sari hanging on a line, an intercut, a link between Anna and the murderer.

  After dropping Anna off, I directed the taxi back to the Raffles.

  The boy still displayed his wares when I arrived. Soon he’d close up shop. No one went shopping in a monsoon rain while sheets of water would chase each other down the street.

  As I walked toward him, he edged into the protection of the Raffles porch. He glanced down the street, ready to run.

  I sat down on the damp curb, not too near his table. After several long moments, a small body plopped down next to me. A small hand stroked the red down on my arm. I waited until he spoke first.

  “It matches,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, and pulled at a lock of my hair. He pulled at a lock too, gently this time.

  “That’s because it’s real, not out of a bottle,” I said, wondering if he would understand what I meant.

  “Real,” he said.

  “Yes, not like the sea lion, not pretend. Did you see an amah wearing a purple sari go into the Raffles?” I held my breath.

  “Not amah.”

  “No?” What had his young, entrepreneurial eyes seen that my nearsighted eyes missed? All I had seen was a flash of garish color. I knew, from editing film, how easy it is to visually fool people. “What then?”

  “Ang mo.”

  “Ang mo, like me?”

  He nodded and then shook his head. “Not like you, dark hair, and little, little.”

  “Wearing a purple sari.” I knew now.

  “Lady pretend, like pretend sea lion. You buy, now?”

  “Yes,” I said, and tugged a lock of his hair. He giggled. I bought two sea lions, which he, grinning, wrapped in newspaper for me. As he finished the clouds burst, a sea of rain pouring down.

  I huddled under the protection of the portico, shivering, trying to remember the heat of fifteen moments ago. The monsoon rain scrubbed the streets. By sunset, the rains would leave the city glistening, ready for its nightlife.

  Back to the police station, I thought. Granted, all I had was a child as an eyewitness. Somehow I would convince them to investigate.

  Then I remembered Roger’s parakeets, caged in the open courtyard. The pounding rain might hurt them. I remembered a tarpaulin cover left in one corner of the courtyard.

  The birds screeched as I walked towards their courtyard.

  The cage lay knocked off its pedestal, its wire door ripped wide. Escaped parakeets fluttered about, excited with their freedom, limited by their wet wings. The rain pounded an accompaniment to their cries.

  In the center of the chaos the oil queen stood. She clutched her hands at her sides. Something glinted in her right hand. Her hands, cut when she ripped the wires, dripped blood. The blood mingled with the purple dye dripping from her sari. No, Anna’s sari.

  “He liked to cage things,” she said.

  I could not see her face through the curtains of rain and the wet on my glasses. I stepped closer. “How did he cage you?”

  “At first, it was only a little, like the others, but he knew I had more, and more to lose. When it got too hard for me to pay, he showed me how to embezzle funds from AmericonTran.” She sighed and looked up.

  Her eyes refused to focus on me. Her mouth hung slack, her lower teeth showing. I looked at her right hand at the blade of a knife she had used to rip open the cage.

  “Not so much from AmericonTran that they’d notice. Then he wanted more. I gave him more.” A muscle at the corner of her mouth twitched.

  I edged away. “Anna left one of her work saris at your home.” I could scream, but would anyone hear me above the thundering rain?

  “We’re the same size, Anna and me. I tried on the sari. It fit. That gave me the idea.”

  “So you came here to kill him.” The last scenes dropped into place.

  The rains slackened and the parakeets settled as the rain stopped. Now they perched in the trees and along the court benches, fluffing their wet feathers, heads cocked, looking like the gossiping ladies at the Club chattering over a juicy tidbit.

  “Look at those birds,” the oil queen said. “They’re free and they don’t even know it.”

  “You were willing to let them put Anna in a cage.”

  She looked at me, tears in her eyes, and I relaxed. Then her hand tightened around the knife. She lunged. I threw the package of sea lions at her head. Even plastic, the sea lions knocked her flat.

  Perhaps the tears were only the rain on her face.

  * * *

  George Singh smoothed a hand over his wet turban. Two ambulance attendants loaded the oil queen’s stretcher onto an ambulance. She said not a word. Maybe she’d said all she had to say.

  I pointed at the stretcher. “What happens to her?”

  “Hospital, the psychiatric ward, for observation.”

  Another cage. “What about charges of murder?”

  “Maybe not necessary and if necessary, then we’ll see.”

  “In other words, it’ll be handled, uh, discreetly.”

  George Singh raised his eyebrows. “Yes, my American friend, after all, we live in Singapore.”

  Yes, we lived in Singapore. Evening darkened the courtyard. In the fading light, the sea lions no longer looked tacky. They changed with the blink of an eye from a tourist ploy to a proud symbol. It was time to go home and see if Anna’s sari had stained my underpants purple.

  I hoped so.

  Conda’s note:

  Some of my favorite things are mystery short stories, ghost stories and stories about Starke, Idaho, my fictional town that is the setting for my cozy Starke Dead mysteries. So here’s a short story that combines all three!

  Jumping the Gun

  I stare at a spot above Mallard’s eyebrows till he frowns and shakes his head. That makes me shake my head, too. I watch to see if he’s got it.

  “Okay, you can go now,” he says to the murderer. He don’t got it.

  Some days it ain’t worth being dead. I watch my latest chance at stopping my hauntin’ sashay out the door.

  For a man who’s supposed to be worried sick about a missing wife, he sure steps lively. I can see the youth in the set of his shoulders. I can see his wife’s wealth in the expensive cut of his silk suit.
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br />   Sheriff Mallard tosses the file on top of a staggering stack.

  I want to shout at him. I don’t yell, ’cause he won’t hear my ghost voice. Instead, I concentrate on the file folder, and shift it back down in front of him. I doubt if he’ll take the hint.

  I use the breeze from the open window and flip it open, more for my own curiosity.

  Yep, as I suspected, I see that the killer’s wife’s a good decade older than he. Something’s familiar about her face, too, like she’s an imitation of an old friend. Must be a descendant of the original settlers.

  Not that there’s many of them left, these days. After the silver ore petered out and the mine closed, a lot of the old timers moved out, right then. I’d been dead a good ninety years. Good old Starke turned into pretty much of a ghost town for decades, haunted by a few lost souls with no other place to go.

  And me, the town’s one ghost.

  Those were lonely years, just sitting around watching people grow old and die. There wasn’t any chance for me to catch a murderer and quit haunting. Worried me plenty, too. Figured I’d never get out of town.

  Times change. Starke’s Idaho’s newfangled ski resort—fool idea if you ask me, which nobody did. Every day some rich idiot shows up wanting to break their necks on our mined-out mountain. Like that young fancy man who just strutted out of here.

  Mallard stares at the file and taps his finger on the page, on the woman’s age. Maybe he’s taking my hint. He moves his finger up to the space where the woman’s maiden name is, and he frowns. I don’t keep up on the residents here like I used to, but I know her maiden name belongs to an old ranching family. Land values sure have jumped the past ten years here.

  Mallard shakes his head and puts the file back.

  I think about materializing and giving him a piece of my mind. He’s letting a murderer walk away and seeing a ghost dressed in cowboy boots and six-guns might wake him up to that fact. Trouble is, after I materialize I always end up with a walloping headache and a powerful thirst for whiskey. Ain’t hardly worth it.

  Mallard turns back to his computer where he’s running a check on a drug smuggler. I take a look at the pile and feel a bit mean spirited, even for a spirit. I never had such a workload. Crime sure has gained popularity in the past hundred years.