by Alice Duncan
And I really wanted to know why he’d chosen to get himself murdered at Minnie’s place. As far as I knew, the only people who willingly hung out with Minnie and Libby were a few old friends from town who were at least as strange as they were.
And Mr. Burgess, who couldn’t be said to hang around any place at all, but for whom Minnie and Libby had an inexplicable fondness. He gave me the willies.
When I heard the sound of an automobile, I dropped my dill and ran to the front porch, risking a scathing denunciation from Libby. I was surprised when, without a single nasty word, she joined me there a few seconds later.
“It’s not Phil.” I was very disappointed. I was also starting to be annoyed by his dillydallying in town when he knew how anxious I was.
Libby didn’t say anything to me. She turned and hollered into the house, “Minnie, it’s O’Dell again!”
O’Dell? Again? John O’Dell? What the heck was he doing here. John O’Dell was one of Rosedale’s few well-off souls. I don’t know if he was a millionaire or anything like that, but he had more money than most of us. He dealt in real estate, primarily farm and ranch land, which there was a whole lot of in the area.
Minnie joined us on the front porch, a frown decorating her plump face and drawing her wrinkles down. “I already told him no. Why’s he back again?”
Grabbing at the snags of their conversation and what I knew about Mr. O’Dell, and trying to create something comprehensible out of them, I spoke to Minnie, Libby being too deaf for my purpose. I didn’t want Mr. O’Dell to hear my question. “Has he offered to buy your place, Aunt Minnie?”
Minnie nodded. “He has.”
Hmm. “I didn’t think you had enough land left to make a decent ranch property.”
“I don’t.”
“Anyhow, if anybody wanted to buy it, I suppose it would be Mr. Gunderson, since his property runs next to yours.”
“That’s what Joe always says. He always tells me, ‘Minnie, if you ever decide to sell the place, sell it to Gunderson.’”
Good old Uncle Joe. “Then why does Mr. O’Dell want it? He’s not acting for Mr. Gunderson, is he?”
“He didn’t say so.”
“Anyway, Mr. Gunderson would just talk to you directly, wouldn’t he?”
“I should think so.”
“Then what’s Mr. O’Dell up to?”
Minnie shrugged, which didn’t contribute to my understanding.
‘Twas a puzzle. I knew Minnie had sold off a lot of her land before this, because she didn’t want the bother of running a big ranching operation without Joe at the helm. And everybody knew that John O’Dell dealt in ranch property and was pretty enthusiastic about his business (that’s a nicer word than grabby). But why would he want this big old house out in the middle of nowhere with hardly any land attached?
O’Dell stopped his car, a big, heavy Hudson, and stepped out of it. He wore a white suit, appropriate to the weather but hardly common in the rough-and-ready community of Rosedale, New Mexico, and he carried a white Stetson hat. All the men in town wore cowboy hats of one sort or another, but few of them wore the expensive kind like Mr. O’Dell’s. Most of the men I knew sported straw hats, as a matter of fact. Even the ranchers and cowboys, who actually needed cowboy hats.
“How do, ladies?” he called as he headed toward the porch. He had a face like a hound dog, with jowls that shook when he walked. He wasn’t especially fat, but he was well-fed, and he had a little paunch that his white suit didn’t do much to hide. His smile was wide, and his teeth were as white as his suit and looked as if they took up half his face. He took good care of himself. Well, he could afford to. “Heard you had some excitement here this morning.”
“I suppose you could call it excitement,” I said dubiously. I’d be more inclined to call it a tragedy myself.
“How do, Mr. O’Dell,” said Minnie. I could tell she wasn’t awfully pleased to see the man.
“Might as well come inside,” Libby said ungraciously. “We ain’t got the cucumbers in the pot yet. All these interruptions.”
“Would you care for a glass of tea?” Minnie was always polite, even if she didn’t want to be. Usually even with me. “Libby, fetch some tea for Mr. O’Dell,” she screeched into the house.
“Yas’m,” came Libby’s grouchy response.
“Don’t want to bother you ladies. Just thought I’d stop by to see if there’s anything I can do for you.”
That sounded nice. I wondered if he meant it. Although Mr. O’Dell usually had a smile and a handshake for anyone he encountered, I got the impression he wasn’t an especially altruistic fellow.
“I don’t think so, thank you, Mr. O’Dell.” Minnie led the way into the house, stopped, then decided against it. It was darned hot in there, what with the stove being lit for preserving pickles and all. “Let’s sit on the porch, shall we?”
Front porches in and around Rosedale didn’t get much use as a rule, except during the autumn months. In the spring, the winds were far too blustery. Since there wasn’t much by way of trees or tall buildings or walls to interfere with their trajectory in those days, if you sat on the porch, you’d get hit with everything from flying dust to small pebbles to dried-out old tumbleweeds. The winds during the springtime were fierce enough to scrape the paint off walls, not to mention scour the skin off children’s legs. I remember walking to school against the wind and ending up there with my shins scraped raw, thanks to wind-blown dust and grit. It got in your teeth, too, a most unpleasant consequence of living here.
During the summertime, it’s too darned hot to sit on the porch except in the evenings, and then the mosquitoes will get you if you aren’t careful. You’d think that, as dry as it looks around here, we wouldn’t be troubled by mosquitoes. However, there are plenty of rivers in the vicinity, even though you wouldn’t know it by looking. Besides the Pecos River, we have the Rio Hondo and the two Berrendos, east and west, and the Spring River, which bubbles up from a spring a little west of town.
In the wintertime, it’s too cold to do much hanging about on porches. We even get snow sometimes, and there are those winds which occasionally plague us in the winter, too. Autumns are mostly mild.
That day, though, in spite of the intense summer heat, outdoors was cooler than indoors due to the aforementioned pickles. So we took seats on Minnie’s front porch, which Uncle Joe had thoughtfully provided with an overhang to offer shade. Minnie and I sat on the swing, and Mr. O’Dell took one of the chairs, fanning himself with his Stetson. “Whew! It’s hot today.”
“Summertime,” said Minnie, as if that one word explained everything. Which it pretty much did.
“Yup.” Mr. O’Dell turned to me. “Nice to see you out here, young lady. You staying with your auntie?”
“Yes. I’ll be here for a while.” Darn it.
“You come out after the incident?” There was another nice word; incident sounded so much nicer than murder.
“No. I arrived yesterday morning.”
He nodded. “It’s good of you to take care of Mrs. Blue, but don’t you think it might be better if you all went to town for a little bit?”
“Probably,” I said, wanting to add that it wasn’t my fault we weren’t in town already, and that I’d have left a couple of hours ago if it had been up to me.
This time he shook his head, looking mournful. “You must have had quite a start, findin’ that man like you did. Who was it found the body?”
“Me,” I said ungrammatically.
Mr. O’Dell shook his head.
“And it was a start, all right.”
“I should think so. Good thing you’re done growin, or it could of scared you out of a year’s growth.”
I don’t think he was trying to be funny. I only nodded somberly. Libby banged out of the house carrying a tray with glasses on it, and I belatedly realized I should have been inside helping her. I’d catch it later, for sure. In an effort to mitigate my lapse, I leaped to my feet and took the tray from
Libby. “Can I help you with anything else, Libby?”
“The work’s all done,” she said, crotchety as ever. “You can just sit yourself back down and laze around some more.” She huffed back into the house muttering, “good-for-nothing . . .” under her breath.
The unfairness of it made my teeth clench and my cheeks burn. I knew I was blushing, so I kept my head down as I poured tea from the pitcher. “Here you are, Mr. O’Dell.”
His knowing chuckle made me look up at him. “Don’t you mind Miss Libby, Miss Annabelle. She’s always been that way. I’ve known her ever since I was a boy. She was mean as a snake then, and she’s mean as a snake now.”
Minnie clucked her tongue. “Libby is a wonderful woman, really.”
Mr. O’Dell took a long gulp of tea then wiped his lips with a handkerchief he pulled from the breast pocket of his suit. “I expect she is. She’s still mean, though. I remember her chasing us boys with a broom when we come out here to ask your Joe, God rest his soul, if we could pick berries for him.” Shaking his head as if in remembrance, Mr. O’Dell went on. “She scared us good, she did. Tongue’s sharper than a spike.”
“That’s for sure,” I said, hoping Minnie wouldn’t take it amiss. But it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one Libby mistreated. Heck, if she could be mean to Mr. O’Dell, she could be mean to anybody . . . although I guess she’d given him a rough time before he got rich.
We sat on the porch, gazing out over the plains. While there wasn’t a whole lot to see, since it was summertime a few things were pretty green in spots, mainly the creosote and sage bushes and a few blooming mallows and bind weeds. Purple patches of verbena showed through the weeds. Ever since one of my English teachers taught us about purple prose, verbena always reminds me of bad poetry. Still, the flowers were pretty. Summer’s when we generally get our rain in Rosedale, mostly in the form of thunderstorms that rattle the windows and scare the dogs. But the rains also bring on the few wild flowers that have nerve enough to brave the harsh conditions in southeastern New Mexico.
“Reason I come out here today,” Mr. O’Dell said after a few moments, “besides to see how you ladies was doin’, of course, was to see if you’ve changed your mind about sellin’ this place, Mrs. Blue. What happened last night must of scared you bad.”
“It was awful,” agreed Minnie, “but I’m not selling, Mr. O’Dell. I expect I’ll live here until my Maker calls, and I join Joe in the hereafter.”
“Well, but don’t you think it might be safer for a couple of ladies like you and Miss Libby to live a speck closer to town, ma’am? No offense intended, but if anybody took it in his head to rob you or anything like that, you wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fuss.”
“Fiddlesticks. Who’d want to rob us?”
Mr. O’Dell’s hound-dog face lengthened. “It’s a wicked world, Mrs. Blue, and gettin’ wickeder all the time. What with all them gangsters running around, and them flappers kicking up their heels, you never know what’s going to happen. It’s shameful. You can’t depend on anything in this life like you used to could. It’s a shame. A crying shame.”
“I’ve heard about gangsters in Chicago,” I said, fascinated, forgetting in my eagerness that I should have waited until Minnie had spoken. “Minnie doesn’t get the newspaper.”
And that was another reason I didn’t want to be here. Not that the Rosedale Daily Record was much of a paper, but it was better than nothing, and it did report the big crime news from New York City and Chicago–unbelievable stuff, if you lived out here in the middle of nowhere.
Mr. O’Dell nodded solemnly. “It’s the truth. Used to be you could depend on ladies to be ladies and gentlemen to be gentlemen. Not any longer.”
Minnie said, “It was the war that changed everything. You know that song, ‘How’re you going to keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree.’”
Hmm. I’d heard that theory before. I wondered how much truth there was to it. I suspected even then that older people always resented younger people and didn’t like to see the world as they’d known it change. In mitigation of Mr. O’Dell and Minnie, however, things really were pretty different from when they’d been youngsters. We had airplanes now. And radio receiving sets. Motion pictures. And there had been the Great War that had involved the entire world, more or less. And there were flappers and girls in short skirts who smoked and drank and didn’t obey their parents. I guess such alterations might make a person wonder if the world was going to heck in a handbasket.
“Ain’t that the truth.” With a deep sigh Mr. O’Dell resumed fanning himself with his hat.
Another silence ensued. I don’t know what the older folks were thinking about, but I was wishing I could read the newspaper, go to a flicker, and talk with my friends in town. And get my hair bobbed and my skirts shortened. That last thought was only a rebellious fantasy. I wouldn’t dare do either of those things.
Finally Mr. O’Dell rose from his chair, creaking almost as much as the chair did. “Well, I don’t want to bother you none, Mrs. Blue, but I do wish you’d reconsider my offer. I have a buyer who’s very interested in this property.”
“Who’s that?”
He smiled and shook his head. “This person don’t want his interest in property out here to become common knowledge.”
Minnie and I shared a puzzled glance. Everybody knew everybody’s business in Rosedale. Keeping secrets was about the most difficult thing a body could do in a town our size.
Mr. O’Dell didn’t continue with that topic, however. “This is a right lonely place, out here on Pine Lodge Road. One awful thing already happened here. I’d hate to learn that you or Miss Libby or this fine young lady here was next.”
Next? Egad! “You sound as if you know something, Mr. O’Dell,” I said. “Do you really think there’s some kind of criminal running around killing people?” Not a cheery notion.
He patted me on the shoulder. “Now, now, don’t get all het up. I just don’t like thinkin’ of you three ladies out here all by yourselves.” He recommenced shaking his head. “After what happened and all, well, it’s best not to take chances, don’t you think?”
That sounded almost like a threat, which it couldn’t have been because Mr. O’Dell has said it, and Mr. O’Dell was rich and we weren’t, and there was nothing for him to threaten us about. Certainly not a crummy old ranch house on a teensy plot of land. I guess that dead body had spooked me more than I’d realized; I’m not generally so fanciful. On the other hand, finding a murdered man in the side yard did give one pause. I probably could be forgiven a morbid fancy or two.
I had risen, too, as had Minnie. I shot her a glance. “I’m getting another dog. Poor Jeepers is almost as deaf as Libby.”
“Annabelle!” Minnie. Sternly. Nuts.
“It’s the truth, Minnie,” I said, sticking to my guns. “He didn’t even bark last night when that poor man was getting conked in the head and knifed in the chest.”
“That what happened to him?” Mr. O’Dell frowned. It looked to me like a worried frown.
“Yes. And Jeepers didn’t say a word.” That didn’t sound right. “Well, you know what I mean.”
Minnie made a sound of protest, but I was right, darn it.
“How’s about I bring y’all a young pup, Miss Annabelle?” Mr. O’Dell grinned at Minnie. “She’s right, you know, Mrs. Blue. Nothin’ like a frisky pup to let you know when trouble’s brewin’.”
“Jeepers is a good dog,” I muttered, feeling a little guilty about casting aspersions on Jeepers. But he might possibly have done something to prevent the disaster if he’d been doing his duty as a guard dog. “He’s just a little old and deaf.”
Lucky for me, since I didn’t want to hear any lectures from Minnie or Libby, Phil’s old truck chugged up the drive just as Mr. O’Dell was taking his leave. Phil climbed out of the truck and wearily ascended the porch steps.
“Whew! It’s hot out here.” He wiped his sweaty forehead with the sleeve of h
is shirt. “How-do, Mr. O’Dell.”
You can pretty much predict the first sentence anybody will say during the summertime in Rosedale. It was sort of like a password.
“How-do, sonny. Hotter’n a firecracker,” agreed Mr. O’Dell with a toothy smile. He held out his hand for Phil to shake.
“Morning again, Mrs. Blue.” Phil nodded at Minnie and took Mr. O’Dell’s hand.
“Good morning, Phil,” Minnie smiled at him as if he were something almost too good to be true.
“Sorry you had to do such a lousy job this morning, young man.”
“Yeah, well, somebody had to do it.”
Phil sounded so stoic and so much as if he considered himself a hero, and Minnie was in such a fawning mood regarding him, that I rolled my eyes. Not that I didn’t appreciate Phil’s taking the body to town, but if he hadn’t done it, somebody else would have. He saw my eye-roll and frowned.
Because I didn’t want him mad at me, mainly because I was wild to know what had happened in town, I said, “How about some cold tea, Phil? There might even be some ice left if you want it.”
My conciliatory offer must have worked, because he stopped frowning. “Thanks, Annabelle. Don’t mind if I do.”
Braving Libby’s scorn and evil tongue, I went into the house, fetched another glass (without glancing once at Libby, the old cow) and took it back outdoors. I didn’t want to stick around in the kitchen long enough to see about the ice, so I just told Phil, “Sorry I forgot the ice, but there’s still some in the pitcher.” There were maybe two tiny slivers floating in the dregs of the iced-tea pitcher, but back then people didn’t take things like iced drinks on a hot day for granted as they do nowadays.
“That’s okay. Cold tea’s just fine.”
“Well, I guess I’ll finish takin’ myself off,” said Mr. O’Dell. “Remember what I said, Mrs. Blue. Take care of the ladies, Miss Annabelle.”
“I will. Thanks.” Truth to tell, at that moment in time, I was considering how to maneuver Libby in front of the next crazed attacker who showed up at Minnie’s house. It was neither a kind nor a proper thought, but we all have our lapses.
