Mild West Mysteries: 13 Idaho Tales of Murder and Mayhem

by Conda Douglas

  I held up my hand in a stop talking now gesture. “There’s more than one huckleberry patch around here, Dora.”

  “Yeah, but this one’s the closest to town.”

  That’s why I figured the bear would be there. Two-stop breakfast shopping, the dumpster first and then the huckleberries for dessert—and with the bear so full and focused on the berries, the poor thing would never know the bullet that hit him. And die happy.

  “And when did you ever know Arianne to not take the easiest way?” Dora asked.

  I didn’t have any instances. I held out my hands to Mallard, wrists close together.

  Sheriff Mallard ignored my gesture, grabbed another roll and leaned back in his chair. “Trouble is, you’re not the only one with motive in this town, and so far, we got no proof of anything.”

  “So I’ll just stay under suspicion?” I hated that idea. Bad for business.

  “And others,” Mallard said, looking at Dora.

  Dora choked on her roll. “Me? You can’t—”

  “For now.”

  * * *

  “I got him, I got him,” Tony crowed. He stood next to the tail gate of his Ford truck, a newer but still beat up, model than the Bristol’s. He smoothed his luxuriant moustache with one hand while with the other he pointed at the truck bed.

  I stood with the rest of the group gathered around the truck. Although most of the others inched away from me, the murder suspect, save for loyal and also-suspect Dora. Arianne’s autopsy showed she’d been shot. I’d turned over my guns, as had a number of hunters, but no luck—and as Dora pointed out, everybody in Idaho had “family” guns and nobody registered great-grandpa’s pistol. So suspect I remained.

  A bear’s bristly black snout stuck out on the tail gate.

  “I got that dumpster diver,” Tony clarified something that didn’t need clarification. Starke’s main construction foreman stood tall and broad chested, almost bear-big, glorying in his moment.

  I stepped up close to the truck and got a good look at another kind of suspect. Right off, I wondered if that bear could be my dumpster diver. He looked far too skinny to be a bear who’d been helping himself to a trash smorgasbord.

  “How much?” I asked, pointing at the bear.

  Tony stared down at his trophy. “I’m not selling my bear. I’m keeping it.”

  I sighed. Great at construction, sometimes a little slow on the uptake or down low about other things, our Tony. “And what are you going to do with it?”

  Tony looked blank.

  “Do you know how to skin it to keep the pelt? Do you know how to render the fat—” I stopped at the thought that, with my friend and customer attrition I might not need any fat because I might not have any takers at this year’s Thanksgiving. “—and preserve the meat?” I soldiered on, pushing aside thoughts of twenty-five uneaten turkeys. “And then tan the skin—”

  With each of my sentences, Tony’s face drooped.

  I sighed. “Look,” I said, “I’ll do all that and send the pelt off to be made into a rug and give you that rug for payment, all right?”

  Tony, now grinning, nodded.

  After I cooked up the bear meat, I knew it couldn’t be the diver. Bear meat takes on the subtle flavoring of what the bear has been eating. This bear tasted of sage and huckleberries, delicious, but not my tossed-out-cinnamon-roll flavor I’d expected.

  I considered the bear stew in front of me. I huffed. Figured it’d fall to me to get that darn fool bear that kept sneaking around so quiet I never heard—

  Quiet? Bears didn’t know from quiet. They created a symphony of crashing trash cans when they dived.

  That meant it couldn’t be a bear. Then what …? I leaned back in my chair as a couple of pieces tumbled together. Then I knew what I needed to do.

  * * *

  “It’s okay, Paul.” I pitched my voice low and easy, like I was trying to get close to a deer for one of my nature shots.

  Paul jerked away from the trash can. In one hand he clutched my bait, a fresh bag of my cinnamon rolls. “I’m not stealing. It’s trash.”

  I reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. His too-skinny-mom’s-a-drunk-and-can’t-take-care-of-her-son shoulder. “I know. Just as I know you shot Arianne thinking she was a bear.”

  Under my hand, his shoulders hitched. “I didn’t mean to. I really did think I was shooting a bear. I didn’t know what to do.” He gave a single, smothered sob.

  “It’s okay. I know what to do.” I patted his back and added, “Come on, let’s get you some milk to go with those cinnamon rolls.”

  Turned out, the judge ruled it an accidental shooting—dang straight as that was what it was. He only sentenced Paul to community service, a class in hunting etiquette, and after Paul’s mom went into a program, gave him to me to foster. Turned out, Paul proved invaluable in helping with the biggest Thanksgiving Day Turkey Fry Day I’d ever had. Turned out, people did notice the difference between bear fat and olive oil. Turned out, when I mentioned this Turkey Day would be my last hurrah frying with bear fat … all that was left of forty turkeys was a few well-gnawed bones.

  Now Paul, who’s filling out fast, sleeps in my back room, sweeps up and saves his salary for a new truck. And eats up all my leftovers. And I do mean all the leftovers.

  Here in Starke, we take care of our own.

  Conda’s note:

  Another holiday story, this one inspired by hair. As a woman with naturally curly hair that turns into a puff ball when it grows past a few inches, I’ve always been jealous of women with long, straight hair. This story grew out of those feelings—and one bizarre Halloween when I wore a wig and horrified everyone.

  Boise’s Harrison Boulevard, mentioned previously, is famous both for the elaborate Halloween decorations (think bales of hay decorated with full size lit-up skeletons fencing an enormous blow up black cat) and the generous treats (think full size candy bars) that the occupants provide every year.

  Appearance is Everything

  All that hair made Robert realize how he could kill his wife on Halloween night, get away with it, and keep the money and his girlfriend.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized to the tiny woman with the straight black hair that hung to her knees. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you were Bitty.” He’d hollered “Bitty” at the woman when he’d spotted her standing at the back of the line. “Because of your hair,” he said, as if that explained everything. For him, it did.

  The wide-eyed woman raised a hand to her hair, palm out, as if protecting the effusive flood of black.

  “My wife has the same long hair.” Robert put down his personal-all-for-him bucket of fried chicken and added, “Let me pay for your meal.” When the woman smiled and nodded, he grinned back at her, overjoyed at the image lurking in his mind of his wife dead.

  “It’ll work,” Robert promised his girlfriend, Sandy, later at dinner at her place.

  She shook her head as she placed the chicken salad, with free range chicken from the Boise Co-op, and little chicken in much salad, in front of him.

  “I mistook a stranger for my wife and I’ve been married to the old bitty biddy for twenty years.” His stomach growled. Robert looked down at his plate and remembered he’d been so excited that he’d forgotten his bucket of chicken at the take-out. Amazing, he thought as he patted the extra fifty pounds of padding around his middle. He dug in, for once not caring that he ate something green.

  “All you saw was all that hair,” Sandy said. “That doesn’t matter—”

  “What matters is that I made the mistake,” Robert said through a mouthful of crunchy green masquerading as food. “And I see Bitty every day.” He shuddered and shoveled more salad into his mouth, now ravenous. Everything about his wife made the empty space in his belly bigger.

  Fifty pounds ago, that hadn’t been true. When he first met Bitty, he found her name charming and appropriate for her minute stature, her mimicking of Cher’s long-ago black hair and hairstyle
beautiful, and her class-awareness, well, classy. It hadn’t hurt that her father, Bitty’s one remaining relative, owned a major computer company in mini-Silicon-Valley Boise.

  “Any dessert?” Robert asked now, as he gulped the last of the too-small serving.

  “But, Robert,” Sandy said as she placed a bowl of fruit compote, no added sugar, in front of him, “I can’t imagine that somebody won’t notice.”

  “Who?” Robert answered. “You know that appearances are everything with Bitty. And she only makes the one at our annual Halloween party.”

  The October 31st holiday remained a traditional big deal in Boise, a safe enough city for children to go door-to-door. The adults celebrated as much as the kids, with large parties. None as elaborate or grand as Bitty’s.

  Robert’s stomach growled at the remembered image of Bitty at last year’s event, still squeezed into her revealing Cher costume. She seemed not to notice how the plunging neckline and slit high skirt revealed only wrinkled flesh.

  Once his wife had been a young Bitty, now she was an old one. It had taken ten years of marriage for Robert to acknowledge that Bitty’s classiness was only extreme snobbery. That Bitty’s longterm worship of Cher was only misplaced narcissism. And that her name was only an excuse for her to never grow up.

  Robert blamed Bitty’s father, who’d taken one look at fiancé Robert and created an unbreakable trust for his “Tiny Treasure,” another name for Itty-Bitty. Now, with doting dad long dead, and twenty years into a miserable marriage, Robert knew his only options were to kill Bitty or eat himself to death.

  Robert took a big bite of the compote and almost spat it out. It burned into the back of his throat. Sandy, his health-fanatic girlfriend, had baked it with too much healthy cinnamon, to reduce his boiling high blood pressure. Sandy was the same size as Bitty, but there the resemblance ended. Sandy, with her short, sporty, curly red hair, adored Robert, adored cooking and adored new experiences.

  Unfortunately, Sandy’s job as an exercise instructor only made enough for her to live on. Robert, who’d never worked, didn’t want to start at forty-four.

  Robert looked at Sandy’s frowning-in-doubt face and forced himself to swallow. “This is perfect timing.”

  Sandy looked blank. It was a common look with her, but understandable, with Robert’s obtuse comment.

  “We follow our Halloween party with our annual European trip, remember?” Robert explained. He put his spoon down. The idea of traveling for three months again during Europe’s worse weather and with Bitty as she dragged him through the tourist traps of the continent—blood thundered in his ears.

  Always before, he’d comforted himself by consuming mass quantities of the various cuisines of Europe. Before, he hadn’t had Sandy in his life, or such high blood pressure. He didn’t think he could make it through three cold and dreary months this time.

  “What do you mean?” Sandy asked.

  Robert sighed and reflected, not for the first time, that Sandy did share a certain dimness with his wife.

  “You’re the same size as Bitty,” he explained. “I find a wig that matches her hair. After the Halloween party, we kill Bitty—”

  Sandy gave a little squeak of dismay. Adorable. Not at all like the piggy squealing Bitty always indulged in.

  “Yes, but it needs to be done,” Robert continued. “And done the night before we go to the Bahamas.” No more freezing his generous buns off in Europe, Robert vowed.

  “The islands? Us? Together?” In an instant turnaround, Sandy clapped her hands.

  “Our honeymoon. Three months later we come back, you wearing the wig …” He paused at the sight of her grim face.

  She ran her fingers through her curls. Women and their hair, he’d never understand it. He resisted the urge to touch his own balding head.

  “It won’t be forever,” Robert explained, in a patient voice he remembered using with Bitty, years ago. “You don’t have to wear the wig in the islands. And after six months or so, we can say you cut your hair to donate it to those cancer patients and decided to get it dyed and permed.”

  Sandy nodded then clapped a hand over her mouth as if she might become sick. “What about Bitty’s—um—leftovers?”

  “You mean her body? Have you forgotten her one hobby? Her dirt?”

  Bitty loved making dirt. She composted. Everything from the kitchen and the lawn went into an enormous, steaming pile. A tender mistress of compost, she tended the mound, stroked it, spoke to it like a lover. She even planned their European vacation around when the muck needed to “rest.” She produced fabulous dirt.

  She never did much with the dirt except for a little desultory gardening, a couple of tomato plants and way too many zucchinis. Robert wondered how anyone could live in Boise and not know that one zucchini plant could feed a neighborhood.

  Dear god, how Robert hated zucchini, unless Sandy made her fat free zucchini pie, of course.

  “It’s only right that Bitty should be laid to rest where she can contribute to what she loved best,” Robert concluded.

  Sandy nodded.

  The biggest problem Robert found was finding the wig. He didn’t want to be anywhere he might be recognized as he and Bitty often patronized the same Boise costume shops, or remembered for buying an odd item for a guy. So he limited his search to the smaller stores in Nampa and Caldwell, small satellite cities of Boise’s. Yet, even here, he got lucky.

  Two days before Halloween, just as he was about to give up, he discovered a costume shop in Caldwell that not only had the wig, but was about to go out of business. He got the wig, on sale, and paid cash to a harried clerk swarmed with customers searching for last minute deals.

  Robert’s last evening with Bitty proceeded beautifully. She glowed at their usual party, tossing her long black signature hair every few moments. While she glowed, she drank. And drank. Robert added two strong sleeping pills to her last drink as they were saying farewell to the last of the guests. Bitty slumped to the floor seconds after Robert closed the door. An unconscious Bitty proved easy to smother.

  That he’d smuggled Sandy into the house early that day confirmed Robert’s luck. After chain sawing Bitty into itty-bitty bits, Robert found himself exhausted and with his blood pressure slamming a pulse in his ears. Still, it took him over an hour to convince Sandy she had to be the one to “compost” Bitty.

  “Life as always, remember,” he kept telling her, “Mrs. Browning,” the standard old biddy of a nosy neighbor, “will be watching.”

  The old woman always watched the compost pile out her back window, even during the winter months, as if she suspected the dirt to be complicit in a crime. Who knew? This time, she was right.

  Sandy, after a series of icks, and throwing up three times, wore the wig and dug into the compost pile to distribute Bitty’s parts.

  No one saw Robert and Sandy leave by taxi in the pre-dawn hours. He and Sandy boarded their flight, right on time.

  The one glitch in Robert’s and Sandy’s three-month “honeymoon” was that Robert had to buy a new wardrobe. Twice. Instead of eating his way through Europe, he made love all over the Bahamas. Sandy also insisted on walking everywhere and swimming and snorkeling. Not enough sex or not enough activity and she’d sulk. Adorable. Sorta. By the time Robert returned home, he’d dropped his fifty pounds and his blood pressure to normal.

  The first day home, Robert handed Sandy her wig and said, “Time to turn the compost pile.”

  Sandy’s lower lip protruded. Robert hadn’t seen that lip for a while. Somehow her lip didn’t look quite as cute as it had before he’d murdered Bitty.

  “You’ve got to do what Bitty would have done,” Robert insisted. “At least for a while.”

  With ill grace, Sandy snatched the wig, smashed it on, and slammed outside.

  Robert watched her forking the compost pile and considered how fortunate it was that Sandy adored traveling. Lots of things could happen on a trip. In a year’s time, surely all the female DNA in the
house would be Sandy’s. Good for confirmation that Bitty had died an accidental death.

  As he watched, three policemen approached Sandy. One took hold of her pitchfork and another took hold of her arm.

  Robert’s blood pressure rose to its highest ever. He stepped outside. “Excuse me, officers,” he called out as he trotted toward them, “what are you doing with my wife?”

  “She’s not your wife,” one of the police officers said. “Or at least you’re not her husband.”

  “What do you mean?” Robert asked.

  Sandy sobbed.

  More police officers, CSI by their equipment, arrived. One started to gently shift the compost pile.

  “Did you really think you’d get away with killing your husband?” the first policeman asked Sandy.

  “Killing? I’m standing right here,” Robert said.

  “You were seen burying him,” the man continued.

  The CSI uncovered a white bone. It looked human. Maybe because it was human.

  “Or at least you were seen burying several suspicious bundles,” the officer continued.

  “By—?” Robert started to ask, but realized the answer. He glared up at the face half-hidden in the window.

  “Mrs. Snoopy Old Lady didn’t think a thing about it until you returned.” The police officer pointed at Robert. “But this skinny guy doesn’t even look like your husband, lady. Once she got a look at him, she called us.”

  The CSI held up a long hank of dirty black hair.

  Sandy pulled away from the other policeman’s grasp and buried her face in her hands. As Sandy’s wig slipped to one side, Robert reflected that Bitty was right:

  Appearance is everything.

  Conda’s note:

  As told in the previous story, Boise, Idaho is a perfect place for growing some produce. Top amongst these vegetables is the zucchini. Sometimes backyard garden newcomers to the city don’t know about this vegetable’s overenthusiasm and plant several zucchinis. This leads to the crime of neighborhood zucchini drive-bys, when large paper bags full of the vegetable are flung at doorsteps. That crime wave is the inspiration for this story featuring more of my characters from my cozy mystery Starke Dead series and set in that mountain town.