by Alice Duncan
Libby, espying what had prompted my reaction, muttered, “What the . . ?” and stomped down the back porch steps.
Jeepers limped down the stairs and moseyed over to see what all the fuss was about. He lost interest once his curiosity was satisfied, and he and went back to lounging on the porch. Minnie simply had to get another dog.
Minnie continued clucking. “What? What? Why? How?”
They both came to a halt beside me, Minnie with a gasp, Libby with a grunt, which was par for each of them. As for me, I stood there, my hands pressing my cheeks, staring at the hideous sight sprawled next to the chicken coop.
It had been a living man once. Now it was a corpse with a bashed-in head. I couldn’t tell how tall he’d been, although he looked kind of short. I mean, if it had been, say, Phil lying there, he’d probably have taken up a good deal more space. But this guy had been smallish. He looked as if he might also have been of Mexican heritage. Lots of folks around here are. There was a perfectly gruesome amount of blood clotted in his hair and on the ground around his head. In fact, his head was such a dreadful sight, and so compelling, that I didn’t even notice the very large knife sticking out of his chest until Minnie pointed at it with a shaking finger.
“Look at that,” she whispered.
After swallowing hard, I nodded. “I see.” I whispered, too. It seemed somehow necessary to whisper, although I don’t know why. We couldn’t possibly have disturbed the poor dead man, even if we’d danced round him, singing.
“Is it from the kitchen?” A third whisper, this one from Libby.
Evidently the notion horrified Minnie as much as it did me, because we both tore our gazes away from the body and fastened them on Libby’s face. “The kitchen?” I squeaked. I’d been doing that a lot lately, squeaking. It was a change from, if not an improvement over, whispering.
“Oh, no, Libby, it can’t be one of ours,” cried Minnie, as if the only thing worse than finding a murdered man beside one’s chicken coop would be finding a murdered man whose death had been accomplished with one of one’s own kitchen implements.
Libby didn’t care for our reactions, I guess, because she barked, “Why the deuce can’t it be?” Then she bent over the knife, as cool as can be, and squinted at it. “Ain’t ours,” she announced, straightening again. I was gratified to notice that even the formidable Libby could be affected by so sorry a sight. She was considerably paler now than she had been.
Several seconds of silence followed this news. I think we were all so shocked that we couldn’t think beyond the fact of a man being killed right outside the house.
“I heard noises last night,” I said at last.
“So did I,” said Minnie.
“And I heard somebody cry out.” That sudden, sharp yelp in the night became clear to me now. It had been the final sound to emanate from the dead man now lying before us. I shuddered.
“I didn’t hear that,” Minnie admitted, sounding as if she felt deprived because of it.
Naturally, it was I at whom Libby chose to frown. “Why didn’t you check them noises out if you heard ‘em?”
That was it for me. I’d already suffered a disturbed night, followed by a severe shock that morning, and I didn’t feel like taking any more of Libby’s meanness. “Because I was scared, that’s why!” I shouted in her face. “And I’m glad I didn’t investigate now. I might have ended up like that!” I pointed at the corpse.
Libby blinked and backed up a step.
“Anyhow, that’s what you have a dog for!” I turned from Libby to Minnie. “You have to get a younger dog, Aunt Minnie. Jeepers is too old and deaf to be of any use at all!” Except as a pal, but I didn’t add that part. “If there’s been a dog on duty, this never would have happened!” After I’d calmed down some, I was glad for Jeepers’ deafness, since I’d maligned him unjustly.
Minnie whimpered.
Furious, I went on. “And I don’t appreciate you carping at me, Libby Powell! I’m going to go inside and telephone the sheriff.” Tom Greene was the sheriff of Chaves County. After thinking about it for a second, I added, “And Chief Vickers.”
Minnie’s ranch house was situated in the county outside the city limits of Rosedale. The Rosedale police department would technically not be involved in investigating this death, but I figured the police chief, Willard Vickers, would want to know about it. It wasn’t every day somebody got murdered in or around Rosedale. Come to think of it, I couldn’t recall another murder in years; not since old man Ferncliff shot a man who was trying to steal his cow, and I guess that wasn’t really a murder, since old man Ferncliff’s action had been justified according to folks in town.
As I turned and stormed back to the house, I hollered over my shoulder, “And Phil!” I needed a good dose of friendship just then.
Minnie and Libby followed me slowly, speaking softly to each other. I didn’t even bother to listen since I didn’t care what two old biddies, one of them a harridan, had to say about anything.
My hand didn’t shake exactly, but I fumbled with the receiver when I tried to pick it up. Then I gave the wheel such a crank that Olive Mercer, the town’s telephone operator, was sharp with me when she answered.
“I’m sorry, Olive, but I need to be connected to the sheriff’s office, please. There’s been a . . . an . . . an accident.”
Olive clucked her tongue. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetie. Is it your auntie?”
“No. Minnie’s fine. But it’s important.” Olive liked to chat. I hoped to speed her up some by telling her that.
“I hope nothing’s wrong with Miss Libby,” Olive said, not taking the hint.
“It’s not any of us,” I said. “It’s an emergency!” I think I sort of shouted at the poor woman. I was quite upset.
“Well, really!” snapped Olive. But she connected me to the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Greene wasn’t there, so I relayed a message through his deputy, Earl Wilcox. Earl was alarmed. I didn’t blame him. So was I.
After that I decided Olive might be more cooperative if I told her what had happened, since I didn’t want her mad at me, mainly because I still needed her. Besides, news would start to spread as soon as Earl hung up the receiver. I cranked the wheel less forcefully the next time.
“Yes?” Olive said, her tone curt.
After sucking in a breath–why did so many people have to be so darned difficult? –I said in a conciliatory tone, “I’m sorry, Olive. But something terrible happened here last night. Some man was killed. Murdered. Right next to Aunt Minnie’s chicken coop.”
Olive gasped.
“So I need you to connect me with Willard Vickers’ telephone next. He’s probably still at home.”
“I should say so!” I heard noises through the wire. I guess Olive was doing her duty briskly for once. Then she came back on the line. “Who was it? How did it happen?”
“I don’t know the answers to either of those questions. I’d never seen the man before.” I thought about that. “At least . . . well, I don’t think I have. It’s kind of hard to tell.”
“It is?” Titillated, Olive asked, “Why? I mean, how come you can’t tell?”
The image of the dead man’s poor ruined head flashed before my eyes, and I shuddered again. “He was . . . kind of messed up.”
Fortunately, since I didn’t want to chat about it any more than I had to, Chief Vickers picked up on his end of the telephone wire, and I didn’t have to talk to Olive any longer. I’m sure she listened to my report to the chief, because she was nosy, but at least I didn’t have to repeat myself. And, now that Olive had the juicy news, it would be all over town in a heartbeat.
And then, thank the good Lord, I could call Phil. So I did.
Chapter Five
Phil must have made record time in that old rattletrap Ford truck of his father’s, getting from his ranch to Aunt Minnie’s place. He arrived before the sheriff or the police, turning into the yard on two wheels and stirring up so much dust, Libby yelled at him.
I don’t suppose it mattered anyhow, since Phil didn’t even hear her. I’m surprised he didn’t ruin all four tires, the way he hurtled over all the rocks and potholes as he raced up the dirt drive to the yard. I ran over to the truck as soon as it stopped, not even bothering to wait until the dust settled.
“Phil! Thank goodness you came!”
I guess I might have seemed a little too eager, because he threw his arms around me. “I can’t believe it, Annabelle! Who was it? How’d it happen?”
“I don’t know.” I’m sure he only meant to comfort me, and I appreciated his hug for that reason, but I didn’t want to give him false hope or anything, so I extricated myself as soon as I could. “I’ve never seen the man before.”
“Where is it?”
It seemed like such a . . . I don’t know . . . a terrible thing to call a dead human being, although I guess whatever had made the lifeless form human had long been extinguished. Whatever the philosophical implications of the pronoun, I didn’t bother discussing them with Phil. “Out by the chicken coop. Come here. I’ll show you.” Taking him by the hand, I tugged him along behind me.
As I approached the chicken coop, my steps slowed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the body again. But I took a deep breath and led Phil the rest of the way. Now that day had dawned and the sun was up, the flies had come alive. They were swarming over the corpse’s blood-caked head now, a sight I should have anticipated but hadn’t.
“Oh!” I shrieked and started waving my arms wildly over the mass of buzzing fiends.
Phil caught me around the waist and pulled me away. “They’re only doing what flies do, Annabelle. Go inside and get a sheet or something.”
“A sheet?” I hollered. “What good will a sheet do?”
“It’ll cover him up,” Phil said quietly. His arms went around me again. I turned into his embrace and am embarrassed to say that I cried against his chest, blubbering about strange noises and shouts in the night. It wasn’t my finest moment, and I don’t know what possessed me. I guess seeing all those flies “doing what flies do” to what had once been a living human being had brought home the finality of the poor man’s death or something. All I know is my heart felt as if it had been hacked in two. And I hadn’t even known the deceased.
“Go on now,” urged Phil. “I’ll stay here and look around.”
Sniffling pathetically and feeling like a heroine out of a bad melodrama–and not liking myself much because of it–I said, “Okay. Thanks.” And I went to the house to get a sheet. An old sheet. By that time I had myself under control again. There was no way in the world I was going to waste a good sheet on that pathetic pile of flesh and bones out there by the chicken coop.
Minnie kept the rag bag in the cellar, so that’s where I rounded up something to cover our corpse with. It wasn’t a sheet, but what looked like an old faded dress that must have been Libby’s because it would have been way too big for Minnie. It had holes in various places, and the seams were giving way, but the guy out by the chicken coop was way past caring.
By the time the sheriff got there with Rosedale’s dentist, Arnold Bassett, Libby had seen to what use her old dress had been put to, and was still spluttering about it.
“I’ll wash it, Miss Libby,” I said, trying to keep my temper in check. “Anyhow, what difference does it make? You were only going to make a rug out of it, weren’t you?”
Back in those days, nobody ever threw anything away. Clothes that were too worn out to be made into anything else would either be used in a quilt or torn into strips. Then the strips would be rolled and braided into rugs along with whatever other rags had accumulated over the past year or so.
Libby sniffed. “That dress would have made a nice piece of quilt.”
“Nuts. It was too faded. I can’t even tell what color it used to be. Anyhow, we needed something to cover up the body.”
“Why?” demanded Libby. “That there feller ain’t going anywheres.”
Callous old bat. “Because there were flies crawling all over his head and probably laying eggs in the wound.”
Minnie, who had been abnormally silent all morning so far, said, “Oh, Annabelle, how horrid!”
I nodded. “It was, believe me.”
“Unnatural child,” Libby muttered. But she left off scolding.
While I’d been inside getting something with which to cover the corpse, Phil had discovered the means by which the blow to the head had been accomplished.
“Don’t touch it,” Phil warned, pointing out the big rock that had suspicious brownish-red stains on one side of it.
I looked from the rock to Phil, incredulous. “Why in Glory would I touch it?” The mere notion made my stomach turn over.
“Fingerprints,” he said, sounding important.
“Nuts.” Not for nothing had I devoured all the detective novels in Rosedale’s Carnegie Library. “The rock’s too rough to take good prints.”
“Hmph.” Importance had been replaced by annoyance. “Well, don’t touch it anyhow. You’re not supposed to disturb a crime scene.”
“Oh? What about the stupid sheet? I mean dress?”
“For cripe’s sake, Annabelle, you know what I mean!”
I decided it wasn’t worth an argument. Heck, a couple of minutes earlier, I’d been crying like a baby against his manly chest. I muttered, “Sorry, Phil.”
Perhaps I should tell you why the Rosedale dentist had come to a crime scene along with the sheriff. Dr. Arnold Bassett was not only Rosedale’s sole practitioner of the dental arts, but he was also the county coroner. Most of the time it didn’t take Dr. Bassett’s word on whether or not a body was dead and how it had got that way before people started making arrangements, but in suspicious circumstances or when somebody died unexpectedly, he had to show up at the scene and make a pronouncement as to the cause of death.
My money was on the knife in the chest. I figured the blow to the head had only made the poor fellow fall down. Although it was an ugly wound.
Phil was first to reach the sheriff’s car when it rattled to a stop in front of Minnie’s porch. I guess he was trying to act like the man of the family or something. Naturally, since he wasn’t and I’d been forced to stay at my aunt’s house in spite of my own wishes, I soon let everybody know I was the one in charge. Besides, it had been I who’d found the body in first place, darn it.
“Hi, Sheriff Greene,” I said, preempting anything Phil had been going to say. He frowned at me, but I pretended not to notice. “The body’s out here.”
Sheriff Greene was a big man, tall and heavy set. He and his deputy had finally, in the last year, been given uniforms to wear, in order to distinguish the county law from the city law, I guess, although all the citizens of Rosedale knew both groups of enforcement people personally and wouldn’t have been confused even without the uniforms. The sheriff and his deputy did look more official in their tan trousers and shirts and with stars pinned to their front pockets than they would have in regular clothes, however. Neither man wore a jacket. It was summertime, and in the summertime in Rosedale, New Mexico, common sense held sway over formality.
“You found it, Annabelle?” Sheriff Greene had known me from the cradle, so even though I was grown up, he still called me by my first name. I didn’t mind, although it would have been nice if a man called me “Miss Blue” every now and then, just to show some respect, if you know what I mean.
“Yes.” Remembering that discovery, I felt goose flesh rise on my arms, so I rubbed them to make it go away.
“How’d you do that?”
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br /> Before I had a chance to explain, the Rosedale chief of Police, Willard Vickers, showed up. When he got out of his car, a Chevrolet purchased for the police department by the City of Rosedale, he and the sheriff nodded to each other. “This here’s your case, Tom. Thought I’d best come out and see what’s going on, though.”
To the best of my knowledge, there was no rivalry between the two men or their organizations. The sheriff took the county, and the chief took the city. This case might well overlap, depending on what happened from now on.
“Good idea, Willard,” said Sheriff Greene. “Miss Annabelle here was just going to tell us how she came to find a body this morning.”
I nodded. “Hey, Chief Vickers.”
“Howdy, Miss Annabelle. Sorry you had such a start first thing in the morning.”
So was I. However, I took a deep breath and began my narrative. “I was going to gather eggs. I dropped the basket when I saw it.” There was that pronoun again.
“Hope you didn’t bust no eggs.” Sheriff Greene chuckled. Chief Vickers grinned.
I expect my answering smile was tepid at best. “I didn’t finish the job after I found the body. Actually, I didn’t even start it.”
“Ah.” He turned and spoke casually to Phil. “You here at the time, young feller?”
“No, sir. Annabelle telephoned me. I just came over to give moral support to the ladies.”
The sheriff nodded, as if to say he understood that three full-grown women couldn’t be expected to handle the discovery of a dead body without masculine intervention. I wished then that I hadn’t called Phil. Too late.
“You want to take us to the body, Phil?”
There was that masculine thing again. Even though I’d been the one to find the body, the sheriff had asked Phil to show him where it was. Men.
“Do you mind if I come, too?” I really didn’t want to look at that awful sight again, but I wanted to know what the sheriff, the chief, and Doc Bassett had to say about the manner and means of death.
