Mild West Mysteries: 13 Idaho Tales of Murder and Mayhem

by Conda Douglas

  “I can’t imagine you have enough evidence to charge my sister,” Adam continued.

  Frowning, Officer Brown turned back to his computer screen and played the video for a moment. He stopped “play” right at one of the jumps. “Maybe we don’t.”

  Adam dropped his hand from my shoulder, no doubt surprised that the policeman agreed with him. Five years younger than me, Adam was more hard-headed and frozen into his opinions than I. A born attorney.

  The officer gave me a hard stare. “Yet. So I’m letting you go. For now.”

  I didn’t care that he sounded as if he read from the script of a bad TV show, I only cared that I was going to be free. Free to catch a thief. I sensed my brother shift back and knew he was taking a breath to pontificate again. I leapt up, grabbed Adam’s arm and hustled him towards the door.

  “Hey,” he protested.

  “When things are going your way, get going,” I said.

  * * *

  “You’ll be right back at the police station as soon as that cop runs a credit report on us,” Adam said.

  Not if I prove who the real thief is first, I’d almost blurted out. “Maybe, maybe not,” I said instead. I focused on the curving, hilly road, driving the speed limit toward my home. Our home, rather, Adam’s and mine, ours alone ever since Mom died five years ago. I could have driven the road with my headlights off and twenty miles above the speed limit, but didn’t dare. Last thing I needed was a ticket.

  “There’s no maybe,” Adam said. “We’re broke. Unless you come out of the garden shed and let the world know you’re Anony. And sell those albums instead of giving them away.”

  Ah, I’d wondered how long it would take Adam to start that ancient argument. I knew it wouldn’t be more than a few minutes. And it wasn’t. I strove to think of something different to say that would end the argument forever, or at least until I’d caught the thief.

  As I turned into the open, elaborate, eight foot doors of a fence made only of tall, solid doors (ha, ha, very funny, great-great-grandad) I decided to say the simple truth. “Look, if you tell them I made the albums, I’ll deny it. I’ll say I stole them. And I’ll go to jail and you’ll lose The Doors.”

  We traveled in silence the rest of the way up the long oak tree-lined paean to avarice and arrived home. When I stopped the car in front of the massive wraparound porch, Adam jumped out of the car and strode to the huge house without a backward glance.

  I sighed once and turned the car around and headed back to the gallery. The police had confiscated my key, but I hadn’t mentioned my copy.

  * * *

  It should never be this easy. Even for me. My camera had come through for me, created what I needed. Again.

  I flipped through the digital photos on my computer and watched my suspicions proved. I’d set the camera up to capture an image every sixty seconds during the gallery’s open hours. That way, I’d be able to “layer” the few and far between customers until J&J was packed. Because of my setup, I’d caught a thief in the act.

  I had to give her credit, Joe’s wife, Jennie. She possessed a boldness I couldn’t begin to muster, “stealing” items during open hours. Of course, Jennie was co-owner of the gallery, so she could have explained when she took the anorexic statue and walked out. Harder to explain would be her captured walking out with a security camera cassette a few moments after. I leaned back as Jennie’s remembered complaints ran through my mind. “You love this gallery more than me.” “I want to travel, and not just to other galleries and trade shows.” “I didn’t quit Hollywood to come be an Idaho hick forever.” The thefts might be enough to destroy the gallery.

  Questions crowded out the memories. Why had Jennie framed me for the thefts? Did she believe that Joe’s misery over a trusted but dishonest employee would destroy his passion for his gallery? Or was it simpler than that? Did Joe suspect his wife so she had to find a fake thief? Who better than the non-descript, bit-of-nothing cleaning lady?

  I twirled a hank of hair around my index finger so tight it hurt. This was all fine and great, but how to get the proof to the cops? If I took in the camera and the photos, there’d be nothing but questions. Questions I couldn’t answer without outing myself as Anony. I could make an album and leave it in the gallery. But I could imagine Joe or Marian or even Libby putting the sudden appearance of such an album together with me and realizing I was Anony.

  Even if I did confess to my secret artist life, what would prevent Officer Brown from insisting the photos were altered, same as the security camera images? I rubbed my hands over my tired eyes. There had to be a way. I looked past the computer screen into the clutter of my studio, searching for inspiration.

  Adam called my studio a garden shed, but that was at best a mean-spirited misnomer. It’d been built as a small guesthouse back in the day when my family hosted lavish events, back before Adam’s medical bills gobbled our wealth. The small house sported one large room with a tiny bathroom and kitchen—a place for people to change clothes, grab a snack or repair makeup, and rest, before foraying back out to an all night party. Now stacks of leather bound books, albums to be, lay scattered around the computer, as if tossed by a passing stranger.

  Passing stranger. I sat up straight. Anony could be a passing stranger. If I created an album and then typed up a letter explaining that I, Anony, left the album at her home for cleaning lady Albion to find because I, Anony, had photos of the truth … it might not work. But at least it would provide one layer of safety between me and discovery. Even if my photos had no power to shift reality, even if they were only bizarre manipulated images pasted into albums, I wanted to remain anonymous.

  The album might not have to pass police inspection—if I convinced Joe and he confronted Jennie, she might crack. Worth a try.

  I set about doing just that.

  * * *

  It took me all night, but by 9:30 a.m. I stood outside J&J Gallery, the new album tucked under my arm. I congratulated myself on striking the right balance in the album between telling the story I needed to tell and creating Anony’s signature images. I’d even layered customers into several photos for luck. And with any luck, Joe would sell the album after I was cleared of the charge of thief. Sell it for a lot of money and turn the gallery’s fortune around. All problems solved, via my special ability.

  I stood straight for a second before remembering to do my downtrodden cleaning lady slump. Hopeful that Joe would be alone in the store, prepping for the 10 a.m. opening, I strode inside.

  I stopped at the death displayed on the gallery floor. Jennie lay sprawled in a peculiar wax doll pose that whispered the truth that her life had fled. A halo of blood spread out around her head. Her eyes were slanted open, and for a crazy moment, I wanted to photograph those orbs to see if I could catch the killer in her last sight. That never worked. Next to her head, the anorexic lady statue lay, as if another murder victim.

  Joe crouched on one knee next to the body of his wife, one hand reaching out, as if to shake her gently awake from a nap. Marian stood a few feet away, her purse on the floor, contents spilling. With one hand over her mouth, she resembled a lurid cover of a crime novel. Behind her hand, Marian’s eyes shone with an odd, almost triumphant, light.

  We might have stood frozen in our poses forever, save that Libby flung open the gallery door, raced inside calling out, “I brought donuts—” Then she saw Jennie’s body, dropped the donut box in her arms, and started screaming.

  * * *

  Officer Brown gently took the album from my arms. With the thought that I handed him Joe’s motive for murder, I let it go. We stood outside while an amazing amount of police officers and forensic people milled about inside the gallery. Joe stood with his head in his hands. Marian talked to another police officer. Libby sat in an ambulance, moaning, “He didn’t do it,” over and over.

  I agreed with Libby, Joe couldn’t have done it. Not for any reason. And he could simply have divorced Jennie. I remembered the strange look on Marian�
��s face. I’d never quite believed her whole “we’re-divorced-but-still-best-friends” bit. And it rang more false coupled with Marian’s “Sure, I don’t mind working as a clerk at my ex-husband’s store while he lavishes money and attention on the new young wife.” It seemed to me that Jennie’s thieving provided a perfect opportunity for Marian to murder.

  I studied Marian’s expression while she talked to the policeman. Her face retained a smooth, calm veneer. She looked like someone describing coming upon a fender bender instead of a bloody scene of mayhem most foul.

  “Joe didn’t do it,” I said to Officer Brown.

  He ran a hand over his bald pate. “We’ll see what the evidence says.”

  I knew what the evidence would say. Of course Joe’s fingerprints were on the statue, it was his gallery, his stock. Of course, Joe loved his gallery with a greater passion than anything, perhaps even other people. And of course, the husband was always the prime suspect.

  I closed my eyes and saw a photo of a different Joe, old, defeated, slumped on a cot in a cell. I opened my eyes to see Joe being handcuffed and read his rights. Myself an innocent accused, I knew a little of what he must feel as he was placed in the back of the police car. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow Joe’s life to be destroyed.

  I stared over at Marian and realized what I must try. I’d never done such an ambitious project before, but if it created a world with justice, it’d be worth everything.

  * * *

  It took longer than I expected. I had to go through hundreds of my images before I found the right ones. It took me four hours to alter the final photo to tell the damning story. When I finished, I’d transformed a photo of Marian placing a box on a shelf to one of Marian holding a skin and bones woman in her arms above her head—as if she were about to crash the sculpture down upon Jennie’s head. To that one picture, I photoshopped in Marian frowning. She’d been looking at the gallery’s recalcitrant cash register, but now she scowled at Jennie.

  I stared at the image for long moments. I’d never attempted to manipulate a photo to tell a story from the past, only to present a possible future outcome. I shook my head. This wasn’t Anony’s work, this was only my pathetic and perhaps useless effort to show the truth. I placed the photo in a simple folder. I hoped it would be enough to save Joe and punish the real murderer, Marian.

  I drove from my studio to the gallery in early night. Crime scene tape sealed J&J’s front door. It was only a moment’s work to cut through the tape. I stood, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, then stepped forward and placed the photo on the now-empty-of-murder-victim spot. I turned to leave when all the lights flashed on.

  Blinking, I stared at Libby standing a few feet away, a large gun in her small hand.

  “Don’t worry, Marian’s not here,” I reassured her.

  “Oh, I’m not worried.”

  An image of Libby, statue held high, crawled across my mind. I swallowed hard and said, “You can put the gun down.”

  Instead Libby used it to gesture at the body spot where my file folder now rested on a smear of blood. “She deserved to die,” she said. Her trembling lower lip told she lied. But if her lip shook, her gun held rock steady. “She was going to get Joe to close the gallery, one way or another. And then they’d go back to Hollywood and I’d never see Joe again.”

  As I looked at her, I saw the glints of mad obsession in her expression. Why had I never spotted that before? I considered myself an artist, with an artist’s sharp eyes and piercing perceptions. How wrong I’d been. Or had I simply been unable to see in her eyes what might be in mine?

  Libby focused the gun on the middle of my chest. “Now you need to die.”

  I wished I could alter audio the same way I changed photos. “Why?” I asked. “I only wanted to help Joe.”

  “You’re the one who started all this.”

  “No, that was Jennie.” And she’s dead now, so no problem, I wanted to add but didn’t dare.

  “Without your albums, none of this would have happened.

  The words “your albums” echoed in my ears. “I’m not Anony,” I said, with all the force I could find behind those three simple words.

  Libby snorted at my obvious lie. “Your albums were starting to bring buying customers in.”

  Even before I placed my customer-laden album? “They were?”

  “Well enough so Jennie had to steal to get the gallery to fail.”

  I shook my head, trying to process the flood of revelations. “How long have you known Anony was me?”

  “Always. It takes a loser to spot a loser.”

  Libby was right, my mistake in not spotting her had been one of degree. I didn’t want to see more of what I hated in myself in Libby.

  “But why kill me?” I asked again.

  Libby sighed. “Simple. Joe’s in jail.”

  Behind Libby, I saw Marian creeping forward. She must have snuck in while I focused on Libby and her gun. I forced my eyes to go back to Libby.

  “When you turn up dead,” Libby continued, “they’ll know he didn’t kill Jennie and they’ll let him go and we’ll be together.”

  Marian grabbed the closest skinny woman statue.

  “No, don’t,” I cried.

  Libby half-turned as Marian raised the statue high. For a millisecond, I saw my photo made real, not a past story but a present moment.

  Then Marian brought the statue crashing down on Libby’s head.

  Before the police came, I snatched the now bloody photo off the floor. If Marian saw, she didn’t say. She said nothing until Officer Brown gently took her outside, away from the blood and death.

  After much questioning, the cops believed what happened and released us. Although Brown seemed angry and skeptical and told me he’d watch me closely. It helped that Libby still clutched her gun tight in her hand. Perhaps it helped that when Marian finally spoke, she kept saying over and over, “I only meant to stun her, make her drop the gun.”

  Now, I lie awake nights and tell myself it all worked out for everyone’s advantage, except perhaps myself. The notoriety of the killings skyrocketed the customers coming into J&J Gallery, now renamed Joe’s Gallery, providing success at last. Joe comforted Marian right into a re-marriage and both seem content. I told Adam about what I’d done with the photo and he hasn’t mentioned selling the albums since. Best of all, no one knows I’m Anony.

  Now, I lie awake and tell myself Jennie would never have been happy with her life, even if she and Joe had moved back to Hollywood. She wouldn’t have enjoyed all the company of her older husband, much as she dreamt of that, as Joe would be miserable without his gallery.

  Now, for long hours in the dark, I tell myself Libby’s madness meant she’d be caught and caged forever. I tell myself she’d never want to live that way.

  I hope if I tell myself over and over, someday I may believe my words.

  Bonus Story

  Plus Recipe!

  Here is a story and my favorite recipe from my cookbook Starke Deadly Delicious, a cookbook based on my Starke Dead mystery series—with real recipes! A couple of caveats of my recipes are that they are all fast and easy to make, plus delicious.

  Mama Chin’s Live Forever Casserole

  Mad Maddie Starke stared down at her menu and frowned in her signature facial expression of pure fury. She stared up at Mama Chin, whose calm gaze didn’t waver a micro inch. Mama Chin knew all about Maddie’s blow and bluster.

  Maddie pointed at a word on the daily special on Mama Chin’s Save On Café’s menu. “What the heck is that?”

  “It’s quinoa,” Mama Chin said, resisting the overwhelming urge to sigh. She couldn’t resist a shift from aching foot to aching foot. She needed new wait staff. It didn’t work anymore for only her and Paul to try to run the café all on their own. Not with the ski resort successful.

  “Keenwah? How do you get that from quinoa? Why isn’t it qwe-noah? Like it’s spelled?”

  “I agree totally.”

  M
addie’s eyebrows raised high at Mama Chin’s agreeing with her, which almost never happened.

  “But, we’ve got to update our menu to sell to our new customer base, you know, the health-nutty skiers?”

  Maddie’s eyebrows remained halfway up her forehead. “Do you think I’m a health nut?”

  Mama Chin regarded her friend; remembering how Maddie’s favorite meals were meatloaf with gravy, chicken pot pie and bacon and eggs. “Not really.”

  “Don’t you have a real food daily special? You know, meatloaf with gravy? Chicken pot pie? Bacon and eggs?”

  Now Mama Chin sighed. “No. You can, however, order any of those at the regular price.”

  Maddie reared back in her chair. “How many generations have our families known each other? Have the Starkes ever ordered off the regular menu? It’s a matter of pride—”

  Mama Chin leaned forward to stop Maddie’s word flood. “And have any of you ever had a bad meal at the Save On Café?”

  Maddie wrinkled her brow. “Well, once Great-Grandpa—”

  “I can toss any customer out of here, you know.”

  Maddie glared. “Okay, okay, I’ll have the quinoa casserole.”

  * * *

  Maddie patted her mouth and then her tummy.

  “Well, how was it?” Mama Chin asked.

  “I’m so glad I’m always open to new experiences, especially in the realm of good food.” Maddie gave her mouth another prim and somehow smug pat. “And that I’ve decided to eat more healthy.”

  Mama Chin crossed her arms over her chest. “First time for everything. So does that mean you’ll tip for the first time?’

  Maddie’s shocked expression was her answer.

  Quinoa Casserole

  Since the quinoa in this recipe gets baked in the oven, it doesn’t need to be precooked. Instead, it settles into the bottom of the pan and creates the casserole’s crust.