The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave

by Bill Pronzini

  I said, “Now then, Doc. Was the girl molested?”

  “Doesn’t seem to have been, underclothing all in place, but I can’t be certain until I make a complete examination.”

  “Any other marks on the body?”

  “None except some scratches and damage from insects,” he said, the last being more information than I needed to know right now. “Evidently no animals or rodents got at her.”

  Thank the good Lord for that, at least.

  Ordinarily when there’s a death in the valley this close to town, I’d send for Titus Bedford and his hearse. Not in this case, though. I didn’t want word about what had happened here to get out before the coroner’s jury convened, so I’d have time to investigate. It might anyway, but not for lack of trying to keep it under wraps.

  I swore everyone to secrecy until Monday. Nobody objected, though Jeb grumbled a bit about having to take part of a workday off to testify. Then Boone and Carse transferred the body from Jeb’s wagon to the backseat of Doc’s Tin Lizzie and covered it up with a piece of canvas Jeb had. Doc said he’d drive in roundabout to the funeral parlor, avoiding the center of town, and caution Titus Bedford to keep mum when he got there. He and Boone left in the Tin Lizzie, Jeb and his son in their wagon. I had Carse stay put with me. He knew why without me saying anything.

  When the others were gone, the two of us did some more searching of the area around the well and out in the farmyard. He and Boone hadn’t found anything, and he and I didn’t, either. Not until we went to take a look inside the farmhouse.

  The doors and windows had been boarded up, but the boards across the front door had been loosened so that you could pull them aside and walk right in. The interior was full of dust and spiderwebs, smelled of mildew and dry rot. But somebody had been in here not too long ago. There were scuff and smear marks and footprints in the dust on the parlor floor. Hadn’t been the Barrett kids; one clear footprint was a man’s, a fairly big man judging from its size, and another was narrow and short enough to’ve been made by a woman.

  A few unsold and discarded furnishings were left in the parlor—a broken-legged table, a whitewashed cabinet with one door missing and the other hanging askew from its hinges, and a ripped-up horsehair sofa with some of its springs showing. The sofa was what held my attention after I was done looking at the floor. It had a blanket on it, and not a tattered, dirty one. I picked up the blanket, looked it over. Plain, ordinary, the kind you can buy just about anywhere. Not new, but fairly clean.

  Carse, who’s about as sharp-eyed as me, said, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Most likely.” I poked around on the sofa. Between two of the cushions was a hairpin that was too bright to’ve been there long. Wasn’t anything else on or in the sofa, but when I moved it so I could look underneath, I found something there.

  “That a button?” Carse asked.

  “Yep. Torn off a man’s brown jacket, looks like. Not much doubt now the girl was meeting somebody here on the sly.” Not that that was much of a surprise. According to Reba, Charity Axthelm had a reputation for being man-hungry and free and easy with her favors.

  “Same man who killed her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “The peddler, Rainey?”

  “Maybe,” I said again. I gestured at the marks in the dust. “Looks to me like she was strangled in here and then her body carried out and dumped into the well.”

  “The killer figuring that with winter coming, there’d be no chance of it being found until spring.”

  “And hoping it might never be.”

  “But why’d he kill her, a pretty young thing like that?”

  “Find that out when we find him,” I said. “I reckon we’re done in here for now. We got more unpleasant business to attend to, and it’s time we got to it and got it over with.”

  Carse grimaced. He didn’t say anything, but I knew he was wishing he didn’t have to be part of it. I didn’t blame him; hell, I didn’t want any part of it, either. But it had to be done, and I was in no frame of mind to face the chore alone.

  SIX

  THE AXTHELM RANCH was over to the east, just about three miles from the Crockett property and double the distance from town. I’d been there maybe four times, the first to offer a hospitable welcome when the family moved here from Nebraska in ’06, the others when I was stumping for votes during election time. It was a fairly small spread on land good for cattle and hay that J. T. Axthelm had inherited when his uncle passed on. He’d not only kept it up, but made improvements. Ran about the same number of cows old Frank Axthelm had, fifty or sixty head; owned a few horses, a few pigs, a flock of chickens.

  He wasn’t an easy man to know. Civil enough when you saw him, but he didn’t talk much and kept himself and his affairs more private than most. Whatever the initials stood for I never found out; he’d signed J.T. Axthelm on the tax roles and voter registration forms. We weren’t on a first-name basis, anyhow. I did know that he’d ridden with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, and that a wound he’d received on the San Juan Hill skirmish was the reason he walked with a limp; I’d got that information from his son, Bob. His wife, Miriam was her given name, was on the quiet side, too, and neither of them socialized much.

  Bob and Charity, on the other hand, were both outgoing youngsters. They came into Peaceful Bend regular before and after they graduated school—he was twenty-one now and she’d been two years younger, both of them good-looking and popular. You’d see one or both at the community hall dances and picnics and other social functions. Charity had never lacked for male attention and had a flirtatious streak, but I hadn’t put much stock in Reba’s gossipy claim that the girl was promiscuous. Until now, after what we’d found in the Crockett farmhouse.

  I was still wrangling with myself as what to say to her parents when Carse drove us through the Axthlems’ gate. The house was good-sized, another room and a screened back porch having been added. House and barn and a scatter of outbuildings—corral, pigpen, brooder house, shed to keep farm implements out of the weather—were all in good repair. Same with the fenced hayfields and cattle graze. A nice piece of property, all told.

  The noise the flivver made brought Mrs. Axthelm out of the house and her husband limping from the barn. Carse left the engine running and he and I stepped down. I still hadn’t decided how much to tell of what we knew and suspected. One thing I had settled on: I’d deliver the blow straight out, and only to him. Looking at the girl’s mother was like looking at an older, careworn version of her daughter. I figured she’d break down when she was told, and if there’s one thing I can’t bear, it’s watching a woman, especially a newly bereaved woman, weep and carry on. The sight near unmans me every time.

  Axthelm nodded to Carse and said to me, “Sheriff. What brings you out here?”

  “Need to talk to you privately, Mr. Axthelm.”

  He didn’t waste time or words. “Miriam, go back inside.”

  She didn’t argue, just turned on her heel and disappeared into the house. The set of her slender back and shoulders said she knew it was bad news. Axthelm knew it, too. He stood straight-backed, head up, gnarled hands held close against his sides.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I’m afraid we’ve got bad news. About your daughter. She—” The rest of it got stuck. I swallowed and coughed to clear my voice box.

  “Get it said, Sheriff.”

  “I’m sorry, real sorry to have to say this, but she’s dead.”

  He took it without flinching, without moving a muscle. Just stood there board-stiff for what seemed like a long time. “How?” he said finally, and his voice hadn’t changed, either. He had a tight rein on his feelings, as tight as a man can have at such a time as this.

  “Killed. Found a little while ago on the Crockett property.”

  “Where?”

  “The abandoned farm a few miles from here.”

  “Killed how?”

  I got the rest of
it out quick. “Looks like somebody choked her to death, then put her body down an old dry well. Two, three days ago. Jeb Barrett’s boys were fooling around over there this morning and they found her.”

  “Somebody,” Axthelm said. “Who?”

  “Don’t know yet. Could be that fella Rainey, but—”

  “Who’s Rainey?”

  “The traveling peddler that was in the area the past three weeks or so. Your daughter never mentioned him?”

  “No. Why should she?”

  “Word was she took a shine to him.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Well … sorry again, but enough of a shine to run off with him.”

  A muscle jumped on Axthelm’s jaw. “Who told you that?”

  “Local gossip.”

  “Bullshit. Charity wasn’t that kind.”

  I had a short nibble on my mustache, hawked my throat clear again. “She’d been in that well two or three days, like I said. Where’d you think she was all that time?”

  “Kalispell, with her brother. Bob went up there on ranch business. She was supposed to go with him.”

  “You didn’t hear from Bob to say she didn’t?”

  “No. Must’ve figured she changed her mind.”

  Axthelm spoke in the same flat monotone, but I sensed that he wasn’t giving me the straight truth. That maybe he knew about her planning to run off with Rainey, or suspicioned it, and was lying to protect her name. But I couldn’t call him on it, not now. Wouldn’t matter anyway if Rainey turned out to be the man who’d strangled her.

  The one thing that bothered me about that possibility was the blanket in the Crockett farmhouse. If the girl had been bestowing her favors on Rainey, why had they been meeting in such a place, all that distance from town? Why not do their trysting in the peddler’s big, slab-sided wagon, down along the river someplace? And from what Jeb had told me, and that my own observations had confirmed, it wasn’t that heavy wagon of Rainey’s that’d mashed down the grass and weeds on the Crockett lane.

  Axthelm said, “Where’d you take her?”

  “Undertaking parlor in town.”

  “So the whole town knows by now.”

  “No, sir. The only ones who know are the ones I told you about and I swore them to secrecy. And Titus Bedford and Doc Olsen won’t talk.”

  “It’ll get out anyway.”

  “Maybe so, but not for a while with the lid on tight. Not until we can get a line on the man responsible, God willing.”

  “God willing. God don’t care about the likes of us.”

  Wasn’t anything I could say to that. “Have to ask you to make a positive identification when you come in to arrange for burial. Law requires it.”

  “Later today.”

  “Something else I have to ask,” I said to break an awkward little silence. “Was your daughter keeping company with anyone in particular?”

  “What’s that mean, keeping company?”

  “Seeing regular.”

  “No.”

  “Nobody she went out with more than once?”

  “No.”

  “She must have had admirers—”

  “Not that I know about.”

  I let it drop. There were other ways of finding out—Reba Purvis, for one, much as I disliked the prospect of asking her. “Well,” I said. Then, “We’ll find whoever did this thing and he’ll hang for it, I promise you that.”

  There was another little silence before he said, “Anything more you want to know or say, Sheriff?”

  “No, sir. Except my deepest sympathies to you and Mrs. Axthelm.”

  “Mine, too,” Carse said, speaking for the first time.

  A short, jerky nod, and Axthelm limped away to the house.

  Carse drove us out of there. On our way through the gate, he said, “Seemed to me Mr. Axthelm was holding back on us.” He’s quick-witted, Carse is, doesn’t miss much.

  “Seemed that way to me, too. Plays his cards close to the vest.”

  “Kind of funny that he wouldn’t know who she was stepping out with.”

  “She may not have had any callers at the ranch.”

  “Pretty young girl like her? Wouldn’t he find that peculiar?”

  “Not if he discouraged it. Or she pretended she wasn’t interested in men, didn’t want him to know who she was seeing.”

  “That business about her supposed to be up in Kalispell with her brother didn’t sound right,” Carse said. “You think maybe he found out someway about her and Rainey?”

  “If he did, it’d have to be after Rainey pulled out.”

  “So Bob may not be in Kalispell, either. Axthelm could’ve sent him to find Rainey and fetch her back.”

  “Same thought crossed my mind.”

  So had another. Bob Axthelm was something of a hothead. If he had been sent on the peddler’s trail and tracked him down, what would he do when he found out his sister wasn’t with him?

  SEVEN

  FIRST THING I did when we got back to town was to go see Clyde Rademacher.

  Clyde is Peaceful Valley’s county attorney. He’s also mayor of Peaceful Bend and chairman of the board of education, and if his wife, Ellie, has her way, he’ll one day run for a seat on the state legislature. He’s a little on the pompous side, Clyde, but I’ve called him a friend for twenty years. Best billiards player in the county when he sets his mind to it—next to me, that is. We’ve had many a spirited game at the Commercial Club.

  As county attorney he is responsible for summoning the members of the coroner’s jury as well as prosecuting criminals, so he had to be let in on the temporary secret about the murder. So from the office I went to his big house on Catalpa Street, a block and a half from where Reba lived. He and Ellie were home. Clyde Junior, the only one of their three offspring still living with them, was away somewhere, which made the telling easier than it might have been.

  I could have insisted on a private talk with Clyde, but if I had, Ellie would’ve said something like “Clyde and I have no secrets from each other, Lucas, you know that. Go ahead and say what you’ve come to say.” She’s not as much of a busybody as Reba—cut from the same cloth, but she knows when to keep her mouth shut—and she rules the Rademacher roost. Besides, I had some questions for her. She was the take-charge sort elsewhere besides her home, one of her leadership roles being the organizing of church socials and the weekly dances at the community hall.

  I kept the details of the crime and its discovery to the necessary minimum. The one thing I left out was my suspicions that Charity Axthelm had been carrying on with somebody in the abandoned farmhouse. Clyde didn’t need to know it yet, and Ellie would have pounced on it the same as Reba would. It was still just speculation and I didn’t want it to get out and spread around until if and when I found out if it had a bearing on the girl’s murder.

  They were both shocked at the news. Clyde shook his bald, knobby head and said, “Bad business, very bad. A blot on our community.”

  “I knew that man Rainey was a wastrel the first time I laid eyes on him,” Ellie said.

  “Woman chaser, do you mean?” I asked her.

  “Yes. A sly charmer.”

  “Set out to take advantage of the Axthelm girl?”

  “Of course he did, and obviously succeeded. She ran off with him, didn’t she? Or was planning to.”

  “You know that for a fact, Ellie?”

  “Someone heard him bragging about it.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. A reliable witness.”

  “According to who?”

  “Reba Purvis.”

  Uh-huh, I thought.

  Clyde said, “Do whatever is necessary to have him caught, Lucas, before he seduces and destroys some other poor girl. I’ll see to it he’s punished good and proper.”

  “If he’s guilty.”

  “If? You have doubts?”

  “Some. He doesn’t seem to have much motive if Charity was fixing to go away with him.”

 
“Of course he does,” Ellie said. “She must have changed her mind at the last minute, and he flew into a rage and choked the life out of her.”

  Out on the Crockett property? Why there, of all places? But all I said was, “Maybe so.”

  “It has to be so. Who else could have done such a terrible thing?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know yet,” I said. “The girl was pretty and popular, must have had her share of swains. Any young fellows in particular that you know about?”

  Ellie has a long, narrow face, kind of horsey when she frowns and draws her mouth into a slash. “Surely you don’t think one of our young men took her life?”

  “I don’t think anything at this point. Just exploring possibilities. Was she keeping company with anyone you know about?”

  “No,” she said, flat and kind of quick.

  “Well, did she dance or spend time with one fella more than another?”

  “I don’t recall. She was … popular, as you said.”

  “Why the pause, Ellie?”

  Now her mouth was set in prim lines. She didn’t answer.

  I said to prompt her, “I been told she had a reputation for being fast. Would you say it was deserved?”

  “I have no way of knowing for certain. But I will say this: Where there’s smoke there’s fire. Yes, and what goes around comes around.”

  Clyde said, “Ellie, the poor girl has been brutally slain. No matter what her morals might have been, she didn’t deserve to be murdered. Have some compassion.”

  “I do have compassion. I was merely answering Lucas’s question.”

  This wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I tried another tack. “What about girlfriends of hers? Anyone she was close enough to, to confide in?”

  “Well … Laura Peabody, perhaps. I’ve seen them with their heads together a time or two.”

  Laura Peabody was a town girl. Lived with her folks on the east edge, waited tables and did maid work at the Valley Hotel. As far as I knew, she didn’t have Charity’s kind of reputation and I wasn’t about to ask Ellie for her opinion on the subject.