The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave

by Bill Pronzini

  “Two nights ago. The tribe gave him a big ceremonial send-off.”

  So now my notion stood at one hundred percent correct.

  But I still couldn’t make up my mind what I was going to do about it.

  I propped my feet on the desk and tried to exercise my brainpower, such as it was. Which wasn’t much, judging by the results. Too many things cluttering up my head. Not the wooden Indian business anymore, that was more or less settled, and besides, it had been stuffed down into third place on my list of concerns. The other two were what occupied my time.

  The itch at the back of my mind started up again, but I still couldn’t seem to scratch it free. I had the sense that once I did, it would go a long way toward pointing out which of Charity Axthelm’s bevy of boyfriends had seeded her and then strangled her. No use trying to force my memory to cooperate. Meanwhile, about the only action I could take was to go around interrogating each of them again, and what good would that do? The questions wouldn’t be any different and the guilty one would lie to me the same as he had before.

  Wasn’t anything I could do, either, to find out quick whether or not we had a multiple murderess in our midst. I worked up a plan of action for when there was enough proof that Grace Selkirk and Annabelle Carter were one and the same person, if they were, but until that time came all I could do was hang and rattle.

  Shortly past noon I walked over to the Elite Café and ate the twenty-cent lunch, which was beef stew and biscuits today. Buttermilk biscuits, wouldn’t you know, that were light as a feather but that I had trouble swallowing in spite of myself. It was a longer lunch than it should’ve been, not because I lingered over extra cups of coffee but because folks kept sidling up and pestering me about the murder. I guess you couldn’t blame them, but all the questions and remarks and opinions shortened my temper. Hell, a man had to eat, didn’t he? And if the citizens of Peaceful Valley didn’t think I was doing the best I knew how to lock the strangler behind bars, let them put a new sheriff in my shoes next election. Not that I said that out loud to anybody.

  Seemed like the only place I could have any peace today was my office. I told Mavis I didn’t want to be disturbed by visitors or telephone calls unless it was urgent business, and locked myself inside. Three choices then: overwork my mental faculties again to no good purpose, take a long nap, or catch up on paperwork. Paperwork won out, much as I chafed at the chore of it. Clyde Rademacher is a stickler for written reports on the doings of the sheriff’s office and the Lord knew there was plenty to write about these days.

  Nobody interrupted my hen-scratching before I finished the last report. Not even Reba, which probably meant she was sulking over the little set-to we’d had yesterday morning. Maybe she’d finally get the message that I wasn’t interested in matrimony no matter how hard she tried and go scheming to take away some other poor soul’s freedom. It was a hope, anyway.

  I was straightening up my desk when the only person I cared to see, Lester Smithfield, came knocking. He said when I let him in, “I just heard from Jordan Unger.”

  Took me a couple of seconds to recall that Jordan Unger was his reporter friend on the Denver Post. “What’d he have to say?”

  “Long wire, collect. I hope this is as important as you made it seem—”

  “What did he have to say, Lester?”

  He took two yellow sheets out of his coat pocket, but just to show them to me. He didn’t need to look at them, had the message memorized. “The woman in the Kansas City crime is Harriet Greenley, evidently her real name. Wanted for the cyanide poisoning of a haberdasher named Scott and the theft of nine thousand dollars. Same description as Annabelle Carter, so there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that they’re the same.”

  “Same general description, you mean? Tall, slender, attractive in a cold kind of way.”

  “That, a different hair color, and one other detail. Harriet Greenley was a blond and has a distinctive birthmark.”

  “What kind of birthmark?”

  “Shaped like a butterfly, on the left side of her neck. She was proud of it in Kansas City, evidently, made no effort to hide it. She did hide it under high-collar dresses in Denver, but her victim there, the factory owner, told a friend of his that she had it.”

  Hid it that way here, too? It’d explain the high collars on those black dresses Grace Selkirk wore. “Anything more?” I asked.

  “No. But that birthmark means something, if the look on your face is any indication.”

  “Might mean something.”

  The tic-tac-toe grooves on Lester’s forehead deepened. “Do you have an idea where the woman is now? Jordan wants to know if that’s what this inquiry is all about. So do I.”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s not an answer. Dammit, Lucas, is Harriet Greenley here in the valley, masquerading under a new identity? If so, what name? And how did you get onto her?”

  “Hold your water, now. I’m not a man to go off half-cocked, you know that. I told you before you’d be the first to know if and when there’s a big story, and I’m a man of my word, same as you.”

  He made an exasperated grumbling sound in his throat. “How do you intend to be certain? Rip a high collar off your mystery woman’s dress to see if she has a butterfly birthmark?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said, “that’s just what I intend to do.”

  NINETEEN

  TITUS BEDFORD HADN’T arrived yet when I walked into the Commercial Club at seven o’clock. Most of the other muck-a-mucks were there, Clyde Rademacher and Doc Olsen and all four members of the town council among them. Doc kept his distance, but Clyde and the councilmen descended on me, yammering for news I didn’t have yet and then browbeating me the way citizens will when an arrest hasn’t been made quick enough to suit them. Took me near ten minutes to get shut of them and out the door. Good thing Titus still hadn’t shown up by then.

  Outside I paced back and forth, waiting. The boardwalk was empty now that dusk had settled and the night had turned bitter cold; I could feel the bite of the wind all the way through my heavy clothing. Be frost again tonight, ice-skim in the morning, the first snow flurries any day now.

  It was five minutes or so before I saw and heard Titus coming. You couldn’t mistake the high headlight beams on his Cunningham hearse, or the heavy rumble of its four-cylinder motor. Only vehicle like it between Missoula and Kalispell. Titus was so proud of it he drove it around town now and then even when it wasn’t needed. Folks looked askance at the practice when he first bought the hearse, but now nobody paid much mind.

  He parked a ways downstreet and I hurried to meet him. “Sorry I’m late, Lucas,” he said when he stepped out, “but I—”

  “No need to explain.”

  “Ready for billiards?”

  “Can’t tonight. Carse is coming in on the eight-oh-five from Missoula. Let’s sit inside the vehicle where it’s not so cold.”

  “What for?”

  “Some things we have to talk over, Titus, like it or not.”

  “What things? What do you mean?”

  Instead of answering I went around and stepped up into the front passenger seat. Wasn’t anything he could do then but slide in behind the wheel again. The spot where he’d parked was beneath one of the string of electric streetlights, and the light coming through the windscreen cast his face into sharp relief when he turned toward me.

  “You and me been friends a lot of years, Titus,” I said, “and you know I have your best interests at heart. But I got to ask you some hard personal questions and I need straight answers. You told me the other day that Grace Selkirk offered to occupy your bed and you turned her down. But that wasn’t the truth, was it.”

  His eyes squinched down to slits. “Now look here—”

  “No, you look here. Truth is, she offered and you accepted, maybe not at first but eventually. I’m not judging you—hell, most unattached men would say yes if the time and the need were right.”

  “My private life is no
ne of your business.”

  “Wouldn’t be under most circumstances, but it is now. I’m not asking as a friend, I’m asking as an officer of the law.”

  “Why? Does your prying have to do with that poisoned buttermilk business she told me about?”

  “Has everything to do with it,” I said. “How long’ve you been sleeping with the woman, Titus?”

  He put a hitch on his tongue. I couldn’t be sure, but when he sat fidgety with his head pulled back and to one side like he was doing now, it meant that he was chafing inside. If the light had been better, I expect I’d have seen a dark flush crawl up out of his collar.

  “Days, weeks?” I said.

  “Damn you, Lucas. All right. Two weeks or so.”

  “Uh-huh. Regular?”

  “… Yes.”

  “She wear a high-collar nightdress in your bed?”

  “For God’s sake—!”

  “That’s not an idle question. Does she or doesn’t she?”

  “She … at first, she did. Lately, no.”

  “She have a birthmark on her neck?”

  “Birthmark?”

  “Does she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shaped some like a butterfly?”

  “Yes. Christ! What does a birthmark matter?”

  “Matters a whole hell of a lot,” I said, grim. “So does money. You keep much cash in the house or the funeral parlor?”

  “Some, not much.”

  “She been after you to draw a large amount out of your bank account for one reason or another?”

  Titus quit fidgeting and drew himself up stiff and tight-mouthed. “I’m not going to answer any more of your impudent questions until you tell me what this is all about.”

  This wasn’t the right time or place, but I had to make sure the woman wasn’t planning a sudden run-out. I said, “All right. But first, tell me this. Are you in love with her?”

  “What? No. No!”

  “Good. That makes it easier on both of us.” I sucked in a breath. “I got good cause to believe her real name’s Harriet Greenley, not Grace Selkirk, and she’s a fugitive from justice, wanted in Kansas City and Denver for murder and grand larceny,” I said, and went on to fill in the bare bones of her crimes.

  He didn’t want to believe it. At first he kept shaking his head, wobbly, like it was about to come loose from the stem of his neck. Then he quit that and clutched on to the steering wheel with both gloved hands, saying, “My God, my God,” in a stricken voice.

  I didn’t say anything, just sat quiet and waited for him to get a grip on himself. Took another minute or so before he managed it.

  “It was loneliness made me weaken,” he said then, low and hangdog bitter. “She looks and acts cold to others, but with me she … she was warm, in and out of bed, and acted like she cared about me…”

  Sure, she did. That was how she got her hooks into a man. Play up to him, pleasure him, and then when the time was ripe to get her mitts on his ready cash, feed him a dose of potassium cyanide. Same principle as a black widow spider after the mating ritual was done with.

  Titus blew out his breath in a vapor-plumed sigh. “What do you want me to do, Lucas?”

  “Nothing tonight, except act natural with her. Don’t give her any cause for suspicion.”

  “You’re not going to arrest her right away?”

  “Not unless she’s fixing to run off again, which isn’t likely if you’re sure no large amount of cash is handy to her.”

  “I’m sure. There’s not more than fifty dollars in the house and mortuary combined.”

  “All right. Tomorrow, then. Meet me in Judge Peterson’s office at the courthouse when he opens up for business at ten.”

  Titus said he’d be there. I didn’t need to tell him the reason; smart as he is, he already knew.

  * * *

  THE 8:05 FROM Missoula was seven minutes late, which by railroad standards is considered on time. I left the stove-warmth inside the depot and stepped out onto the platform when the locomotive came chuffing and rattling into the yards. Only three passengers got off, Carse the last of them toting a Gladstone bag.

  He stood stretching his beanpole frame. “Riding on a train always seems to pinch up my back,” he said when I joined him. “Seats are just plain uncomfortable, no matter what the railroad claims.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Not that driving over rough roads did my back much good, either, never mind that a Hupmobile’s got better shock absorbers than a Model T.”

  “Rented one in Missoula, did you?”

  “Had to. No train service to Ridgley County until a spur line gets built next year, just sixty-some miles of bad road.” His long face shaped into a grimace. “Rental sure wasn’t cheap. I hope Mr. Gilardy won’t refuse reimbursement when I hand in my chit.”

  Morton Gilardy was the tightfisted county treasurer. “He won’t,” I said. “I’ll see to that.”

  We walked down off the platform and over to Main Street, setting a brisk pace. “Have your supper on the train?” I asked on the way.

  “Sandwich,” Carse said. “But I could sure use something to warm me up on a cold night like this. Not coffee—bourbon-and-ditch.”

  “Makes two of us. But not in one of the saloons.” I’d had enough prying and prodding from the citizenry for one day. “I’ll buy you one at my house where we can talk in private.”

  When we were seated in front of the stove in my sitting room, drinks in hand, we got down to it. I said, “What has you convinced Rainey isn’t the one strangled Charity Axthelm?”

  “Well, neither motive nor much of an opportunity. And he was surprised as hell when I told him she was dead, same when I said she’d been with child. Not faking it either time, I’d stake a bet on that.”

  “Why do you say no motive?”

  “He wasn’t running off with the girl. He pulled out of here the day before they were supposed to rendezvous.”

  “Did he, now. How come? Cold feet?”

  Carse shook his head. “Stringing her along so he could get as much as he wanted from her. Slick-talking bugger, not worth the powder to blow him to hell, but not the violent sort.”

  “Then how’d he get injured so bad?”

  “Couple of toughs beat him up outside Timber Point, busted his jaw and his leg and a couple of ribs. Ransacked his wagon, stole some money and a bunch of other stuff. He didn’t put up much of a fight.”

  “Could’ve made that story up, couldn’t he?”

  “Nope. Sheriff Bannerman knows who they are from Rainey’s description and has a warrant out for them. Besides which, there was a witness—a kid taking a shortcut home near where it happened. He ran for the sheriff soon as the toughs rode off.”

  “So that lets out Bob Axthelm. He must’ve got those bruised knuckles in a mix-up with somebody in Kalispell.” I took a pull on my bourbon-and-ditch. I’m not much of a drinking man usually, but when there’s a strain on me I’m as needful of a nerve-calmer as the next man. “Can Rainey prove he left here when he says he did?”

  “Seems so. He stopped over in Hayfork that night and talked a saloon girl into going to his wagon with him. Told me her name.”

  “Might be she’s willing to lie for him.”

  “Might,” Carse admitted, “if she knew him from before. But I think he was telling it straight. Anyway, we can talk to her if needs be. She’s still in Hayfork, and he’s not going anywhere as busted up as he is.”

  “When did he last see the Axthelm girl?”

  “Day before he pulled out, two days before she was killed. Got together then to make plans for when they’d be leaving together—her plans, not his.”

  “Where were they supposed to meet for the departure?”

  “Down at the river, where he was camped. Said that was where they always met.”

  “He never went out to the Crockett property with her?”

  “Swore he never heard of the Crockett property. Didn’t seem to be lying about that, eith
er.”

  “He have any idea who might have killed her?”

  “No. She never said anything to him about trouble with another man, or about another man period.” Carse’s back was still bothering him. He shifted position in his chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “With Rainey out of the picture, I guess somebody local must’ve done it.”

  “Sure seems that way.”

  “You got any idea yet who?”

  “I wish I did,” I said. “I questioned Jack Vanner and Tyler Fix while you were away, but I didn’t get any more out of them than I did out of Clyde Junior or Devlin Stonehouse.”

  “Tyler Fix, eh? So the girl had four lovers, not just three.”

  “Maybe. Reba Purvis put me onto Tyler as one of Charity’s swains. He claims he never had relations with her, but he’s pretty broken up about her death—drinking heavy when I talked to him.”

  “How you figure to find out which one is guilty?”

  “That’s the question. You got any suggestions?”

  “None direct,” Carse said. “But I been thinking, and there’s one thing that don’t add up just right. How come the Crockett farm?”

  “How come she was killed there, you mean?”

  “And how come she and whoever knocked her up picked it for their love nest? Plenty of places closer to town that’re just as private. Over along the river where she and Rainey met, for one.”

  “That’s the way I see it, too. Can’t be because the Crockett place is closer to the Axthelm ranch so she could get home quick afterward, or closer to where any of the four suspects live.”

  “Fifth suspect you haven’t found out about yet?”

  “Christ above, let’s hope not. This case is complicated enough, and I got too much worrying my mind as it is.”

  “Something else happen while I was away?”

  “Plenty. Too dang much, one thing after another.”

  I told him about the Hoveys and their load of bootleg liquor, and about Bandelier’s wooden Indian turning up back where it came from and my notion of the why and wherefore of the theft. Saving the big news for last.

  He didn’t scoff at the notion, but I could tell he was dubious. All he said was, “If that don’t beat all. Sure is a puzzle and a caution, the way Indians behave sometimes. You going to do what Bandelier wants and arrest those two bucks?”