The Wrong Hill to Die On: An Alafair Tucker Mystery #6 (Alafair Tucker Mysteries)

by Donis Casey

  “What do you aim to do now, Levi?” Alafair could not help but glance at Blanche, whose head was now scarcely visible above the table. Levi’s fingertips were dangling over the back of the chair, barely in contact with Blanche’s shoulder.

  “You have to turn yourself in,” Cindy insisted.

  Levi’s lips parted, but before he could answer his gaze shifted and he paled. Alafair turned to see what had distracted him.

  Shaw was standing at the gate, watching them with a puzzled expression.

  Blanche chose her moment. “Daddy!” she cried, and dove for freedom. But Levi was too quick. His hand darted out and grabbed the back of her dress, jerking her back against his chest. Shaw had taken two or three alarmed strides toward them when his daughter called for him, but froze motionless at the bottom of the steps when Levi folded his arms around Blanche.

  “Don’t come no closer!” Levi warned. Blanche stood still, a compliant captive.

  Cindy made a squeaky noise, but Elizabeth gave her friend a tight shake of the head. Alafair mustered all her will to remain silent and not inflame Levi further.

  Levi took a step back toward the kitchen door, drawing Blanche with him. “I don’t want to hurt this child,” he warned, “but I will if I have to. Her and me are leaving, now. I’m taking Geoff’s auto, Cindy. Don’t y’all try to follow us. I’ll let her out in a safe place once I’m away…”

  But Blanche had no intention of letting herself be taken hostage. She clamped her teeth onto Levi’s arm and bit down hard. He squealed and pushed her to the floor, and the instant she was clear of him it was as if a storm broke. Shaw ran up the steps as Levi made for the back door that led into Cindy’s kitchen, the only escape route open to him. He was far enough away from Shaw that he could have made it, had Alafair not grabbed the first thing she could get her hands on—Artie’s baseball, still lying on the table—and hurled it at Levi’s head, striking him squarely on the temple. He sat down hard on the porch, stunned. He recovered instantly and scrambled to his hands and knees, but the fall caused all the delay that Shaw needed to reach him. He stomped on Levi’s back with a booted foot, knocking the breath out of him and sending him sprawling. Shaw straddled his captive and twisted Levi’s arm up between his shoulder blades.

  “Call the marshal,” he ordered. Cindy raced to comply. Shaw seized Levi’s hair with his free hand and ground his face into the floor. “And you don’t move.”

  During the long stunned silence that followed, Shaw gave Alafair and Blanche a speculative once over. Mother and daughter were entwined in each others’ arms, red-cheeked and heaving. Once he had assured himself that they were none the worse for wear, one corner of his mouth twitched up in an ironic smile. Alafair caught his expression and her eyebrows raised.

  He broke into a grin. “They call that a beanball, honey,”

  The Sonora Gang

  Mr. Dillon stood in the middle of the Stewart parlor eyeing the unhappy occupants for a long time before he spoke. “Well, well, well.”

  Alafair and Shaw were wedged together in one of Cindy’s big padded armchairs, and Elizabeth, Web, and Cindy were arrayed across the sofa, along with a much chastened Geoff Stewart, summoned home by the marshal despite Cindy’s objections.

  “So all of this mayhem and murder is just the result of a tragic series of misunderstandings over some love notes?” Dillon’s question was heavy with sarcasm.

  “Killings have been done for even less reason,” Shaw pointed out.

  “Don’t I know it,” Dillon agreed, “but it is a mighty odd coincidence that Arruda and Carrizal were both part of a smuggling gang out of Sonora, ain’t it? What did your brother-in-law know about that, Mr. Stewart?”

  Geoff started when Dillon spoke to him. He was slumped in the corner of the couch, next to Web, with his hands clasped between his knees, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. His eyebrows drew together, as confused as if Dillon had spoken to him in Sanskrit. “Gang? I don’t know anything about a gang, Marshal, or smuggling, or anything about that.”

  Elizabeth snorted. “He’s been too involved in other matters to know what has been happening around here, Marshal.”

  Geoff reddened, but otherwise ignored the remark. “The only thing I knew about Bernie Arruda was that he was a jack-of-all-trades around the neighborhood and that he played Mexican music with his brothers. As for Matt Carrizal, he is my neighbors’ son, and I ate luncheon in his restaurant sometimes.”

  Dillon regarded Geoff with narrow eyes for a moment. His gaze moved across Elizabeth and Web and came to rest on Cindy. “I have evidence that Matt Carrizal participated in the Arrudas’ smuggling ring, and I strongly suspect that your brother may have been involved as well.”

  Cindy gazed back at Dillon, her blue eyes awash with helpless loss, looking shrunken and confused and utterly unlike the Cindy who had confronted her brother an hour earlier. “Mr. Dillon, Matt Carrizal told me that he was involved in charity work with the Yaqui Indians who lost their land to the Mexican government years ago. Sometimes he helped refugees from the revolution. He provided food and clothing and shelter and jobs. All I know about my friend is that he is a kind man who respected the law, sir. As for Levi, you’ll have to ask him about that. If he helped Matt and the Arrudas with their work, I’m proud to hear it, but he never told me about it.”

  Dillon crossed his arms over a broad chest. “Well, if Carrizal thought his work with the Arrudas was strictly for charity, he was sadly duped. The Sonora Gang is heavily engaged in human smuggling, and not only of ill-used refugees, but of spies and criminals of the worst ilk.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Elizabeth was aghast. “Matt would never have anything to do with that.”

  “I hope that’s true, and it may well be he didn’t know the extent of Arruda’s vile enterprise. For in the course of my investigation I’ve discovered that Arruda was a manipulator of the first water. The money he hid in the Rural School building, the quarters and dimes and pesetas that he collected from well-intentioned folks that could ill afford it, was not used only to bring people into this country and secure their comfort, but to buy and send guns to Villa on the other side of the border.”

  Alafair was shocked. “But we heard that the Arrudas had deserted Villa and went in fear of him!”

  Dillon huffed. “Yes, good story, Miz Tucker. Who’d have thought? Bernie Arruda was a captain in Villa’s army and one of his most trusted cohorts till the day he died. In fact, he supplied the guns that massacred some of those who so kindly helped your ailing daughter in Columbus, New Mexico. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, for the past ten years you good people of Tempe have sheltered a viper in your bosom. But you will be glad to know that it’s not just Tony Arruda who has taken a powder. The whole pack of them have up and disappeared. That shack of theirs in Guadalupe is empty. I reckon they’ve took themselves off home to Mexico.” He turned back to Cindy. “If Carrizal and your brother didn’t know what they were involved with, take comfort in knowing that they weren’t the only ones who Arruda used. But if Carrizal was aware of what the Arrudas were really up to, I am sorry to tell you but he was a murderer as sure as Levi Gillander and will have to answer for it.”

  Natividad is gone! That was Alafair’s first thought. She would never have the chance to tell that sweet girl what happened to her father. She felt bereft.

  Cindy, sitting on the opposite end of the couch as far from Geoff as she could get, spoke up. “Marshal, I’m confident you will discover how innocent of intrigue Matt Carrizal was. No human being is kinder, unless it is his parents yonder. As for my brother…” She hesitated, searching for the right words. “You’ve spoken to my father, so you know what he’s like. You have talked to others who know him and who know my family. They’ll say that my father hates all colored people, but that Levi is sympathetic to the plight of the displaced down in Mexico. But take it from me, you cannot be raised by such a man as Father and not be tainted by his beliefs. Levi has the same kind of com
passion for the Mexicans and the Indians that he does for a good mule. No use to be cruel to the pathetic creatures, you know. He wouldn’t shoot it, but he wouldn’t want it moving in next door, either. This is why I believe that Levi would never have been involved in any secret plan to help Mexicans or Indians.”

  Alafair felt her cheeks burning. Things that Levi had said to her suddenly took on new significance in the light of Cindy’s comments. I feel right sorry for the little brown folks. Even animals ought to have a place to be with their own kind and be left in peace. It said much about the world she lived in that she had hardly noticed the casual racism of his statement. But Matt would have noticed. Levi had told her that Matt had approached him about helping with the Yaqui railroad, but nothing had come of it. A few minutes of conversation would have shown Matt that Levi Gillander’s sympathies were only skin deep.

  Dillon’s skeptical expression did not change. Well, it was his job to be skeptical, Alafair thought. But he had not even suggested that Cindy herself was involved in Matt’s enterprise, or indeed that any woman might be engaged in such illicit activities. Alafair was amused to realize that Dillon was blinded by prejudices of his own.

  ***

  Except for the Stewarts, Dillon dismissed them all with a warning that he was not finished with this investigation by a long shot. As Alafair followed Shaw and the others out the back door, she could hear the interrogation resume. Cindy’s prodigal husband was going to have to work to convince the marshal that his sins were strictly of the sordid type and he had been totally unaware of the drama happening all around him. Alafair felt a perverse satisfaction that Geoff was going to sweat for a while.

  She wondered if the Carrizals knew where the Arruda family had gone. She said a little prayer for dear, innocent Natividad.

  Not This

  “I kind of liked Levi, too,” Elizabeth said. “At least I thought he was more reasonable than his old man.”

  Elizabeth and Alafair were sitting alone together in the parlor, each dressed in nightclothes and curled up in one of the large armchairs in front of the fireplace. The only light in the room was from the glowing embers behind the grate in the iron stove. The husbands and children were in bed.

  Alafair drew her shawl closer around her shoulders. “What Cindy said about Levi put me in mind of something I heard a fellow say back in Oklahoma last year, after Congress passed the law forbidding folks from marrying outside their race. He said it was a good law and people ought to stick to their own. That colored people are all right in their place, but he wouldn’t want one to marry his sister.”

  Elizabeth chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Well, the whole business is too wretched to contemplate. For a little while, when I thought Bernie and Matt were engaged in a noble undertaking, I held out hope for the nature of man. But as it turns out, Matt was probably being used by Bernie, who was as big a deceiver and manipulator as I believed him to be in the first place. They were both set upon by a disgusting little toad who couldn’t stand the thought that a brown man had touched his sister.” She heaved a sigh. “I despair.”

  “Elizabeth, I have something to ask you. A few days ago when you dug Cindy’s love letters out of her flour bin, and later when we found the last note in your leaf barrel, you said you recognized the hand. That Bernie wrote them. Yet they weren’t written by Bernie at all, but by Matt. Maybe I mistook your meaning… ” Alafair let the question hang in the air.

  Elizabeth let it dangle for a few moments. “That is what I meant,” she acknowledged. “I did think Bernie wrote them.” An ironic smile formed on her lips. “That scoundrel gave me a couple of letters just like them, same paper, same hand, same kind and tender sympathy. It never crossed my mind that it wasn’t Bernie who wrote them. The notes were neither addressed nor signed. Cindy said he couldn’t read, but he had to have known what was in the letters that Matt had given him to put under her flower pot. He either got somebody to read them to him or he wasn’t as ignorant as he pretended. In any event he had a nose for a sad and willing woman, so I suppose he purloined a few of Matt’s notes to Cindy and used them to woo me. And I fell for it.”

  Alafair blinked, but did not respond. Odd. Her sister’s unexpected revelation did not particularly surprise her.

  Elizabeth looked up at her from under her eyebrows, awaiting Alafair’s reaction. When none was forthcoming, she continued. “It didn’t last but a week or so. Then I quit him and he was off looking for another conquest.” She sighed.“Every time I saw him after that, I pretended like it never happened, and so did he. This is why I was dumbfounded to think Bernie was part of a noble endeavor, but I wanted badly for it to be so. Isn’t it funny how a man can be a hero and a blackguard at the same time, I thought? Turns out he can’t. When I found Cindy’s cache, I just wished she had let me in on it. I thought to tell her a few things about all those sweet words. I figured he would break her heart.”

  “Like he did you?”

  Elizabeth turned her head to gaze at Alafair across the dim space between their chairs. She had been expecting to have to explain herself, so when she answered, her tone was calm. “He didn’t break my heart, Alafair. I was glad to get shet of him in the end. He was a diversion, but the whole thing was too tawdry for me, and I didn’t care for the idea of getting caught and run out of town on a rail.”

  Alafair felt unexpected tears prickle her eyelids. “When did you get to be so hard, Elizabeth?”

  “Am I hard? If it looks that way, it’s just because all my life I have done what everybody told me was the right thing, even when in my heart I knew it was not right for me. And all it’s got me is misery and disappointment. Web may be a good provider, but he’s dull and pompous and not very kind to folks he considers his inferiors, which is anybody not richer or more powerful than he is.”

  “You don’t love him anymore?”

  Elizabeth thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know that I ever did. When we were first married, I was all excited that we were going to come out here where you made your own destiny whether you were a man or woman. Me and Web were going to civilize the West together. He disappointed me, if the truth be known. At least Bernie was bright and attentive, and acted like he was interested in me for more than… you know.” She looked away. “That’s why I kind of understand why Cindy kept Matt’s letters.”

  Alafair’s eyes crinkled. She understood longing and desire better than Elizabeth thought. “How did you manage to carry on with this fellow and not get caught?”

  “It wasn’t easy. Once he came here to the house when Chase was away, and a couple of times I met him over to the room behind the restaurant where he stayed sometimes.”

  “Oh, honey.” To hear the details described made the affair sound more pathetic than titillating.

  Elizabeth’s voice took on a wistful quality. “Do you despise me, now?”

  Alafair studied Elizabeth’s face for a moment before she ventured a response. “You’re my darlin’ little sister, Elizabeth. Nothing you do will ever change that. Besides, I ain’t like Mama and Daddy in that I think folks ought to stay married even if they make each other miserable. But if you’re bored and lonely, it seems to me like there are a lot more honorable ways to fill your time than cheat on your husband.”

  Elizabeth’s expression conveyed her opinion that Alafair was not qualified to judge her situation. For an instant, she looked so much like Blanche at her sulkiest that Alafair could not help but smile. “At least you ought to have the manners to leave Webster before you go to canoodling with somebody else.”

  Elizabeth looked away. “I reckon that wasn’t my best decision, and I wish I hadn’t done it. But at the time… Well, no matter what, I appreciate that you didn’t drop dead with shock or tell me I’m going straight to hell or that you don’t ever want to see me again.”

  “All are weak and fallen short, Elizabeth. I’m just glad you’ve repented of it.”

  “Now you sound like Daddy.”

&nbs
p; “Thank you,” Alafair said, though she knew Elizabeth did not mean it as a complement.

  “I am sorry you’re so unhappy. Why don’t you find something to do? Both my older girls have jobs, and Martha intends to work after she marries.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “What? You think Webster Kemp, Esquire, would allow his wife to have a proper job of work? If Web would let me work for money that would help a lot. I liked it when I was clerking for Web at his law firm before Chase was born. He said I was smart and would make a good lawyer myself. But after the baby come, Web partnered up with Geoff Stewart and hired a clerk and that was that.”

  “Well, there’s plenty of charitable causes. Church work…” Elizabeth made a rude noise, which Alafair ignored. “…civic work. Red Cross, or votes for women.”

  “I did work for suffrage before statehood, and women do have the vote here in Arizona. What, didn’t you know that? Don’t look so surprised. I got disenchanted with politics, though. Too much corruption. And no good ever comes of trying to help people. Look what happened to Matt.”

  “Well, what do you want?” There was an edge of exasperation in Alafair’s voice.

  Elizabeth hesitated, thinking, before she answered. “Not this.”

  Goodbyes

  Shaw had already stacked the luggage beside the front door by the time Blanche and Alafair emerged from the bedroom before breakfast, dressed for travel in their utilitarian dresses and sturdy shoes. Alafair sent Blanche into the kitchen before walking into the parlor to gaze at the pile of carpetbags, burlap sacks, and cardboard boxes and wonder how it was that they were going home with so much more than they had started out with.

  “Y’all about ready to go?”

  Alafair turned at the sound of Elizabeth’s voice behind her. “Just about. I reckon we’ll take a turn or two around the bedroom later and make sure we haven’t missed anything.” She smiled. “If you find anything after we’re gone, you can just keep it. Little enough reward for your hospitality.”