The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave

by Bill Pronzini

  “I haven’t come to a decision on that yet. More important things to deal with first. Whoever strangled Charity Axthelm’s not the only murderer we got in Peaceful Bend, Carse. There’s one even worse been hiding here right under our noses.”

  He straightened up in his chair. “Who?”

  “The woman who calls herself Grace Selkirk. Her real name is Greenley, Harriet Greenley, and she’s wanted in Kansas City and Denver. Poisoned a man in each city for their money and disappeared without a trace.”

  “Poison!”

  “Same kind as in the buttermilk. Potassium cyanide.”

  “Lordy,” he said, big-eyed. “But why’d she try to poison Reba Purvis?”

  I said, “Wasn’t Reba she was after, not directly, it was Hannah Mead,” and went on to tell him why.

  “Lordy,” he said again. “But if you know who she is, how come you haven’t arrested her yet?”

  “I just found out for sure tonight … pretty much for sure. The more evidence we can lay hands on, the stronger the case against her. We’ll be going after some in the morning.”

  “Take her into custody whether we find it or not?”

  “Have to. Before she gets a sniff that we’re onto her and flies the coop again.”

  Carse shook his head, the wonderment kind of shaking. Then he said, “If you wouldn’t mind, Lucas, I believe I could stand another bourbon-and-ditch.”

  Me, too. I built us two more, light on the ditchwater.

  TWENTY

  FOUR OF US met in Judge Ephraim Peterson’s office on Thursday morning—me, Carse, Titus, and Clyde Senior. Clyde was there in his capacity as county attorney; I’d called him from home last night to tell him what was going on.

  The judge was a crusty, stiff-necked old gavel-banger. He’d been on the bench for more years than I’d been sheriff, not all of them in Peaceful Valley. He owned a home in town, but only spent about two days a week here; the rest of the time he lived with his daughter and son-in-law and a passel of grandkids in Kalispell. He didn’t socialize much, so I hardly knew him except in an official capacity. Which was all right with me. His idea of justice didn’t always match mine and we’d locked horns several times, often enough when an Indian was involved. He was harder on them than he was on white men, his Tuesday decision in the half-breed Harker case being the latest example, though he claimed to have no prejudice.

  In the judge’s favor, he was honest and a stickler for law and order. I’d fretted a bit to Clyde that he might balk at issuing a search-and-seizure warrant and an arrest warrant, either or both for lack of sufficient cause, but Clyde assured me he wouldn’t and he didn’t. He listened steely-eyed and scowling to what I had to say about Harriet Greenley alias Grace Selkirk and what we hoped to find in her possession. When I told of the attempt on Hannah Mead’s life, he muttered, “Deplorable!” and his scowl got even more ferocious. He asked Titus if he had any objection to a search of his premises, and when Titus shook his head and said no, the judge made out and signed both warrants and handed them over without argument or cautioning. But as the rest of us were leaving he said to me, waspish as usual, “I won’t stand for murderers loose in my jurisdiction, Sheriff Monk. See that you catch the farm girl’s slayer, too, and don’t be tardy doing it.”

  Out in the hallway, Clyde said to notify him as soon as we had the fugitive in custody and I said I would. Then Carse and Titus and I drove straight from the courthouse to Anaconda Street in the flivver. Titus had passed a sleepless night—dark eye-baggage told me that—but he seemed to’ve regained his equilibrium and had his emotions under control. He hadn’t said much in the judge’s office and didn’t now, speaking only when asked something direct and then mostly in monosyllables. I’d had a brief confab with him before we went in to see Judge Peterson and he was certain Greenley/Selkirk had no suspicion that we were onto her. She’d wanted to share his bed again, but didn’t question him when he put her off. This morning he’d told her he had a financial matter to attend to and that she should watch over the undertaking parlor in his absence.

  The way his house was situated, you couldn’t see the main entrance from anywhere inside the mortuary behind, so Carse parked right in front. The woman’s bedroom was on the second floor, at the other end of the hall from his. She kept the door locked, but Titus had an extra key that he hadn’t told her about. After he used it, I told him to wait in the hall while Carse and I searched the room.

  It was tidy enough, clothes and high-button shoes all tucked away inside a chiffonier along with a leather suitcase, nothing left out in plain sight except a jewelry box and a few women’s toiletry items on a glass-topped dresser. I looked through the jewelry box first. Seed-pearl necklace, rhinestone brooch, and three or four other gewgaws, none of which struck me as being particularly valuable. The chiffonier came next, while Carse poked around inside a big sewing basket and button box. The suitcase was empty and the lining hadn’t been tampered with. Most of her clothing was plain black with lace trimming—no snazzy outfits, no furs or frippery. If she still owned the fancy outfits she’d worn in K.C. and Denver, she’d hid them away somewhere for safekeeping.

  Then we inspected the dresser and nightstand drawers, and the seams on the brocade cushions on the only chair. Unmade the bed and hoisted up the mattress, and Carse got down on all fours and squinted under the bed. After that we hunted for hidey-holes in the floor, walls, ceiling and didn’t find any.

  Nothing of criminal consequence anywhere.

  But then my eye caught again on the handful of little jars and bottles atop the dresser. Might as well take a closer look, which I did. Lotions, violet sachet, face powder, black hair dye. Seduction tools, the lotions and sachet, but face powder? The times I’d seen her up close, her cheeks were pale and scrubbed clean, free of cosmetics.

  I unscrewed the top from the jar. Contents looked like tannish face powder, all right; smelled like it, too. I stuck a finger down inside under the puff, wiggled it around. Ah. Something else in there at the bottom, something that had a slick crinkly feel.

  I emptied puff and powder onto the glass, fished it out—a little folded packet wrapped in that newfangled stuff called cellophane. Slow and careful now, I opened the packet. More powder, white. I sniffed it, then wet the tip of my finger and sniffed that.

  Bitter almonds. Potassium cyanide.

  “Right there all along, more or less in plain sight,” Carse said. He’d stepped up to watch over my shoulder. “Like in ‘The Purloined Letter.’”

  “The what?”

  “Story by Edgar Allan Poe. Tells that the best place to hide something you don’t want found is right out in plain sight.”

  “You get that out of Adventure, too?”

  “Pulp-paper magazines aren’t all I read.”

  Titus was there, too, now; he’d heard us talking and stepped inside. He said, grim, “So she did keep her poison here.”

  “Close to hand,” I said. “Her weapon of choice.”

  “My God.”

  I refolded the packet of cyanide, put it into an evidence envelope I’d brought with me. “Well, now we got all the proof we need. Time to put Harriet Greenley under lock and key where she belongs.”

  * * *

  MAKING THE ARREST should’ve been easy as pie, but it wasn’t.

  Goes to show you can’t take anything for granted when you’re dealing with criminals, women same as men.

  There was a brick path that led from the rear of the house to the rear of the mortuary. Titus led the way along it. He’d insisted on coming along and I figured he was entitled. We went in through the empty embalming room, the formaldehyde smell strong enough in there to clog my sinuses. A low whirring noise coming from one of the other rooms told where she was.

  “Sewing room,” Titus said. “This way.”

  The sewing room was off a short hallway, the door open so the bell could be heard if anybody came in the front way. Harriet Greenley was seated in front of a pedal-operated machine, stitching t
wo pieces of pillowcase satin together for a medium-size casket on a roller table nearby. She had her back to the door so she didn’t see or hear us come in until she let up on the pedal. Must’ve sensed she had company then, more company than just Titus, because she sat stone-still for a few seconds before slow-turning her head.

  I reckon she could tell from our expressions that this wasn’t any ordinary visit, that Carse and I were there on a mission. But she didn’t show it. Looked steady at us, not a flicker of emotion in her ice-blue eyes.

  “Yes?” Just that one word, flat.

  I said, “Stand up, Miss Greenley.”

  A tiny flicker, nothing more. “What did you call me?”

  “Greenley. Harriet Greenley.”

  “You’re mistaken. My name is Grace Selkirk.”

  “There’s no use pretending any longer,” Titus said. “Sheriff Monk knows who you really are.”

  I said to him, “You keep still and let me do the talking.” Then to her, “It’s my duty to take you into custody—I have a warrant for your arrest. Do as you were told and stand up.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Charges, plural. Unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for murder and grand theft in Kansas City and the same in Denver. The attempted murder of Hannah Mead right here in Peaceful Bend.”

  “That is preposterous. I am not Harriet Greenley and I did not attempt to murder anyone.”

  “I got proof that you did.”

  “What proof?”

  “The cyanide you had hid in your jar of face powder.”

  I thought that would crack her, but it didn’t. She had more nerve and gall than H. Plummer, the Virginia City outlaw leader. She didn’t say anything, just sat there like something that’d just been dug up from inside a snowdrift.

  “Do as you’re told, Miss Greenley,” I said, sharp, “and stand up. You’re under arrest. Carse, put handcuffs on her.”

  She stayed put. I thought I’d have to go lift her up myself and I sidled a step toward her, and that was when she moved. Fast, faster than I’d ever seen any woman move. She dipped a hand into the pocket of her dress and came up out of her chair, all in the same blur of motion. What she yanked out of that pocket caught me and Carse both flat-footed, our jaws hanging open.

  A double-action Remington derringer.

  Thumb-cocked and aimed straight at my gullet.

  “Stand where you are,” she snapped. “One more step and I’ll shoot you dead.”

  I could’ve kicked myself. You go to arrest a woman whose weapon of choice is poison, you don’t expect her to have a Henry D. hidden on her person. Fact that she did and that I was looking square into the muzzle made me mad. One thing I can’t abide is having a firearm pulled on me.

  “Put that peashooter up,” I snapped back.

  “You’re not taking me to jail, you goddamn hick sheriff.”

  Hick sheriff. That made me even madder. “Put it up, I said. You’re not about to shoot me or anybody else.”

  “You think not? Come ahead, then.”

  Carse, on my left, murmured, “Go easy,” out of the side of his mouth. I didn’t move, didn’t turn my head so much as a fraction. My eyes were on that derringer.

  She said, “First thing I want you to do is disarm yourself. Take your revolver out of its holster with your left hand, put it down slow on the floor, and kick it over to me.”

  I had my coat open enough so she could see the Colt’s handle poking up. But not open wide enough so I could make a pass at pulling it. I’m no quick-draw artist anyway, and even if I could get it out and up before she ventilated me, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to squeeze the trigger. I’d never shot anybody in my entire twenty-five years in law enforcement, though I’d come close on a couple of occasions. Having to put a bullet in a woman, bad as this one was and despite the situation, was a sickening prospect.

  “No.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me. I’m not about to let you have a second pistol.”

  “I can take it off your dead body.”

  “You’d have to empty both barrels to put me down. Do that and my deputy here will be all over you before you can get away.”

  Temporary standoff. Her eyes were narrowed to slits and her face all clouded up under the white pallor, like rock showing under a skim of glare ice. Maybe a minute crawled off, the silence crackling the way it does during an electrical storm.

  “Titus!”

  The name came out of her sudden, in a half shout. It jerked him out of his lumpish standstill, set him to shuffling his feet.

  “Give me your keys.”

  “Keys?”

  “You always carry them with you. Take them out, drop them on the floor.”

  He hesitated, but when she waggled the derringer at him, he did as he’d been told. Didn’t need to drop the key ring; he was so fumble-fingered it slipped loose of his grasp as soon as he had it out.

  “Now kick them over to me.”

  He obeyed again. Plain enough what she wanted them for. The thought of her trying to make a getaway behind the wheel of his Cunningham hearse was ludicrous as hell, but that was what she was fixing to do. And God help anybody who got in her way. The woman wasn’t just a cold-blooded poisoner, she was damn sure crazy. And about as dangerous as they come.

  I couldn’t let her get away clear, maybe harm somebody else. As soon as she bent at the knees and started to reach for the key ring with her free hand, I took action. Didn’t think about it, just sucked in my belly and jumped at her in a sideways dodge.

  Things got pretty confused the next few seconds. The derringer bucked and cracked loud, and a .30-caliber rim-fire bullet slashed air past my head. Carse yelled something and there was another noise that I found out afterward was him shoving Titus out of the line of fire. And I slammed into Harriet Greenley with my upraised shoulder before she could shoot again, sending her arse upwards across the sewing machine chair.

  She hit the floor with a thump, screeching. I managed to stay on my feet with the help of the table, threw myself down on her as she struggled to get up, and yanked the derringer out of her fingers. Carse was there to help me by then, and a good thing because it took the two of us to roll her over, hold her down, and handcuff her. She kept screeching the whole time, using profanity the like of which would’ve impressed a drunken muleskinner. Carse and I were both sweating and panting and marked with scratches by the time we finished the chore.

  Now I knew what it was like to rassle with a wildcat. And to come within a few inches of being shot. Little wonder I was sweating and shaky. I sure as hell hoped this was the first and last time I’d have either experience.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WE HAD TO hog-tie Harriet Greenley to keep her from kicking, stuff a wad of satin cloth in her mouth to shut her up. Even then, she thrashed around and made furious throat noises and threw looks of hate my way that would have melted a snowman.

  I sent Carse to fetch the flivver. Titus had recovered his equilibrium, but he still looked a touch green around the gills. Hell, I probably did, too.

  “You took an awful chance, Lucas,” he said, half admiring and half chastising, “rushing her the way you did.”

  “Think I don’t know it? But I couldn’t let her get away. No telling what she might’ve gone and done.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “But I wasn’t. That’s all that counts.”

  When Carse came back, we hauled the woman out to the Model T and laid her in the rear seat. I should’ve had Titus do my part of the carrying instead, but I didn’t think of it until my bursitis started giving me hell on the way. I sat back there with her to keep her from squirming around too much. Wasn’t any way we could get her to the courthouse and then into the county lockup without being spotted. It wouldn’t take long before word got out and put the whole town into an uproar.

  Getting the woman into a cell didn’t take any effort, but removing the rope and handcuffs did. Once her legs w
ere free, she fetched a kick at Carse’s privates that he saw coming and dodged away from just in time. Then he shoved her flat on her face on the cot and sat on her legs while I unlocked the cuffs. We got out of there quick before she could do any more than lash us with another hail of profanity. The click of my key in the lock was the sweet sound of relief.

  I locked the evidence packet of cyanide and the Henry D. in the safe, then telephoned Clyde Senior to let him know we had Harriet Greenley in a cell, not mentioning the trouble we’d had getting her there. He said he’d take care of notifying the police captain in charge of the murder investigation in Denver—the officer’s name had been in the issue of the Denver Post Lester showed me—and have her removed from our custody as soon as the necessary legal arrangements could be taken care of. He felt as I did that the sooner we were shut of her, the better. Likely there’d be a jurisdictional squabble between Denver and Kansas City over which would get to try her first, and there wasn’t any use in Peaceful Valley getting into it whether Judge Peterson agreed or not. When it comes to court trials in cases like this, even an attempted double poisoning takes back seat to cold-blooded homicide for profit.

  I left Carse in charge and beat it down to the Sentinel office to keep my promise to Lester before he got wind of the arrest from somebody else. From his excited reaction, you’d have thought I’d brought him news of a big cash windfall. Well, in a way that’s what it was—a windfall, I mean, the exclusive story he’d been panting after his whole life. He pressed me for details, and I gave him enough to satisfy for the time being. One thing I didn’t tell him was how I’d jumped into the muzzle of that derringer and nearly got my fool head blown off. He’d worm that out of Carse or Titus soon enough, and likely make me out in print to be some sort of hero. I wouldn’t mind the feather he’d put in my hat for catching a wanted murderess, but there wasn’t much heroic about the way I’d done it. If I had to do it over again, I was embarrassed to think that I wouldn’t.