by Alice Duncan
“This is it?”
Naturally, that was Phil. I didn’t say anything sarcastic back to him and believe my restraint is to be applauded. “Yes,” was all I said.
“Hmm.”
He dismounted from Bartholomew, and I gave him some water, too. Bartholomew, not Phil. Phil could darned well take care of himself. Which he did, drinking deeply from the water bottle.
After the animals were tended to–we even found a little shade for them to rest in, and Horace managed to find something to eat among the desert plants–Phil unhooked the flashlight from his belt. Then we both took a deep breath for courage, and we entered the cave.
“It smells bad in here,” Phil said.
“Yeah, it does.” It was also creepy and cold, although the latter quality didn’t bother me at first. In fact, it was refreshing. I thought about bringing the animals inside, except that I didn’t think Bartholomew would fit, and it wouldn’t have been very nice to let Horace cool off while Bartholomew sweltered.
“You know,” Phil said after we’d been skulking along for a few minutes, “there’s something stinky in here besides bat poop.”
“How can you tell?” I had presumed the unpleasant odor to be exclusively bat droppings and general dankness.
“Sniff the air. Can’t you smell something else?”
I sniffed. “Like what? I can’t smell anything but bat.”
“No. There’s something else.” To prove it, he sniffed loudly.
His smelling something didn’t help me to smell it, but I tried again, standing still, sticking my nose in the air, and sniffing. “Can you give me a hint?” Because I was no longer in danger of passing out from heat stroke, I felt a little kindlier toward Phil by that time.
“I’m not sure, but I think I smell . . .”
His words trailed off and so did he, along with the flashlight.
“Darn it, Phil, don’t walk away from me like that. I can’t see which way you’re going!”
“Sorry.”
He stopped walking, and I bumped into him. It was dark in there. The flashlight helped, but its beam lit only a straight path. Phil lifted his arm and illuminated the cave in an arc of light, showing what looked like an archway to our right leading into what, in a house, would have been another room. Caves are like that.
Taking my hand, Phil led me through the archway and into the other room. As soon as he flashed his light in there, we understood everything. “Aha!” cried he in prescribed heroic tradition.
My own comment was less heroic and considerably more surprised. “Booze!”
“Booze,” Phil agreed. “Somebody’s using the caves to store bootleg liquor. They must be bringing it up from Juarez.”
“Gee whiz.”
“Did you bring a flashlight, Annabelle?”
“Yeah. I left it on Horace.”
“Go get it, will you? I want to explore and see if there are any more rooms being used for illegal purposes. We can go in different directions.”
That didn’t appeal to me a whole lot, but I figured I’d better not object. Phil was touchy enough already. “Okay. Just shine the light in a path to the mouth of the cave, and I’ll be back in a minute.” He did so.
When I returned with my own flashlight, Phil was nowhere in sight. It was spooky in there. “Phil?” My voice was firm. No sense letting him know my weakness.
“Back here,” a hollow voice answered. “Stay there. I’m just looking around.”
Fine by me. I didn’t want to get too far from the entrance of the cave. “Don’t get lost!”
“I won’t. I’m just looking into some of the other rooms.”
“Find anything?”
“I think so.”
And he said no more. I waited. He remained silent. I waited a while longer. Still, he said nothing.
Finally I hollered, “Phil! Say something, will you? You’re giving me the willies.”
“It’s okay, Annabelle. I’ve discovered another room. More booze.”
“Wow. What are they going to do with it all?” The room adjacent to the mouth of the cave, where I stood, was packed from floor to ceiling (if caves can be said to have floors and ceilings) with liquor cases. That seemed like a whole lot of alcohol for one little community.
“Send it north and east, I reckon,” Phil hollered back.
“Why not west?”
“They can get theirs from the Pacific Ocean and Mexico. Folks in Oklahoma Missouri and Colorado will probably get this stuff.”
“Oh.” I guess that made sense. “How much is there?”
“I don’t know, but there must be a fortune in bootleg stuff in this cave. I’m going to check out another room. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.” Wouldn’t think of it, in fact. I was perfectly happy to let Phil do the exploring. When I was a little kid, I enjoyed wandering around in these caves, but now that I knew what could happen to a person if he got lost in a cave–such things occurred occasionally–my enthusiasm had waned.
Waiting has never been something I’ve done well, however, and I soon got bored. Since I had my own flashlight, I decided I couldn’t get very lost if I looked into the first room we’d discovered. So I followed the path of light from my flashlight and went to investigate.
Phil was right about the money involved in this operation. Before Prohibition, wagons used to deliver liquor in crates to Gus Weinman’s saloon, which was a couple of blocks east of Blue’s Grocery and Dry Goods. Those crates looked pretty much like these crates, but I’d never seen so many of them being delivered to Weinman’s as were stacked here. And, according to Phil, there was another room crammed full of them.
Now how, I wondered, did they transport this stuff elsewhere? Probably in wagons again, perhaps to the highway that connected Rosedale to points north. Then they’d transfer them to automobiles for the trips to wherever.
Or maybe they’d repack the bottles–I assumed the crates contained bottles–into other boxes or cartons that were labeled so that people would think they contained something other than booze. I’d read about that in the newspapers. Somebody had arrested a fellow in Albuquerque for carrying a carton supposedly containing ladies’ mesh bags, but which actually contained liquor. I should think mesh bags weighed a lot less than bottles of booze, but what did I know about bootleggers? Heck, for all I knew, whoever was behind this cave operation might even transport their demon rum via the rails in phony containers. The possibilities seemed endless.
I allowed my flashlight’s path over the stacks and stacks of wooden crates and murmured to myself, “I’ll be darned.”
“No,” came another voice at my back. “You’ll be dead.”
I whirled around. My jaw dropped. I goggled.
“Mrs. Copeland!” Darn it, I’d never even considered Mrs. Copeland as the villain (or villainess) behind the murders!
“You nosy girl, why didn’t you mind your own business?” She certainly appeared angry. Sounded it, too.
“But . . . but I thought you were at your house. I thought you were mourning your husband’s death. I thought–”
She waved her shotgun at me, and I stopped thinking and swallowed instead. “Oh, be quiet, Annabelle Blue! I heard what you said to Mr. O’Dell and I pleaded a headache. I knew you’d come out here snooping. Where’s Phil? I know he’s in here somewhere. He follows you around like a dog.”
Like a dog? Well, I’d have to think about that later. “Um . . .” Oh, boy. I didn’t know where Phil was, exactly, but I sensed she wouldn’t like it if I said so.
At that very moment, I saw what looked like a beam of light flash behind her, from another hole in the cave wall. I hadn’t even noticed that particular opening before, since it was small and didn’t look very promising.
Mrs. Copeland gestured with the shotgun. “Well? Where the devil is he? I don’t have all day.”
I was afraid I didn’t, either. I swallowed. “Um, I’m honestly not–” I didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence because
Phil crept through low opening behind Mrs. Copeland.
His mouth was open, as if he’d been meaning to tell me something, but he had sense enough to shut it when he saw what was going on. And then he did something I’ll always remember with pride for him. Phil was such a darned gentleman, I’d been afraid he’d speak to Mrs. Copeland, which would have been stupid, since she was the one with the gun here. Instead, he took one large step and bashed her over the head with his flashlight. I’d never known he had it in him to bean a lady with, but he proved himself that day, for sure.
“Phil! Thank God! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I dashed to Mrs. Copeland and scooped up the shotgun she’d dropped as she fell.
She wasn’t unconscious. Rather, she rubbed the back of her head and glowered up at us.
I said, “Here’s Phil, Mrs. Copeland. I know you’d wondered about him.” She made as if to rise, and I said, “Stay down until we figure out what to do with you.” She looked at me as if she knew what she’d like to do with me–and it wasn’t pleasant.
“Oh, be quiet,” she snarled. Sore loser, I guess.
“Better tie her up,” I said to Phil.
“What with?”
“Um . . .” Darned if I knew. “I guess we can bind her with my belt. I don’t think my trousers will fall down.”
“I’ll hold her still.” He did so, much to Mrs. Copeland’s spluttering (and, I regret to say, profane) ejaculations of dismay and disgust.
“Thanks.” In order to get my belt out of its loops, I had to put the shotgun down. Since Phil was occupied in holding Mrs. Copeland’s hands behind her back, he couldn’t take it. I propped it against the cave wall a couple of feet away from where we were–I didn’t want Mrs. Copeland to get it back by accident or anything–and unbuckled my belt.
I had just pulled it off with hands that weren’t quite steady, and was about to start work on tying Mrs. Copeland when something awful happened. Although we might have anticipated it, neither Phil nor I had once considered that Mrs. Copeland might not have come out here alone.
“Addie, what the devil is– Oh!”
“It’s about time you showed up!” Mrs. Copeland shook off my hands (and my belt) and pulled away from Phil, who swore, but didn’t try to do anything heroic, bless him. I mean, I’d rather have him alive than buried with honors, if you know what I mean.
“How should I know you’d be in trouble already?”
“M-Mrs. Longstreet?” My mind boggled. I’d never understood the expression until that moment.
But there she was, in all her prudish glory, decked out in her steel-gray suit that was wholly inappropriate for the weather, sweat streaming from her face, holding another blasted shotgun. I glanced at the one I’d propped against the wall, but there was no getting it.
“Yes, it’s Mrs. Longstreet, you silly twit. Put your hands in the air, both of you.”
Although I’d never understood why crooks always told people to do that, unless it was so that they could be sure their hands were empty and in plain sight, I did as she’d commanded. Unpleasant images had begun to infest my imagination, as they had as I rode Horace away from Mr. Burgess that day not long before.
“I don’t understand any of this,” grumbled Phil.
“I don’t, either,” said I. Then I decided to ask. “Are you two the brains behind this bootleg operation? It is a bootleg operation, isn’t it?”
“Any fool could see that,” said Mrs. Copeland, who headed straight for the shotgun I’d so thoughtfully propped up for her, darn me anyhow.
“Then was it you who shot that man beside Minnie’s chicken coop?” It seemed so incongruous, the prim and proper Mrs. Emory Copeland, whose husband ran a shoe store, for sweet glory’s sake, bashing somebody over the head with a rock and then stabbing him in the chest.
“No, it wasn’t Addie,” said Mrs. Longstreet. “That was an accident.”
“Idiot tried to get away with a couple of bottles, and Jorge killed him. He ought to have let him go,” added Mrs. Copeland. “What’s a bottle of booze more or less?”
“Who’s Jorge?” I asked. Nobody but Phil heard me, I guess. He elbowed me in the ribs.
“That’s the trouble with you, Addie Copeland,” said Mrs. Longstreet in her lady-of-the-manor voice. “You can’t be made to understand the value of things. If we allowed theft, we’d have had no product left to market.”
“Then, if Jorge had to kill him, it was stupid of him to leave the body there. Even you must admit that.”
“Very well, but we can’t allow thieves to remain in the organization, as you well know.”
“Fiddlesticks.” Mrs. Copeland shot the bolt on her shotgun. It was a horrifying sound in the confined space of that creepy, cold cave. “Killing the man and leaving him there only created a mess and called the police to the scene.”
“The scene?” That was me, and I’d spoken a little more loudly. Both ladies–I use the word loosely–frowned at me.
Mrs. Longstreet said, “Oh, do be quiet, Miss Blue.” Turning to Mrs. Copeland, she went on, “You’re a fine one to talk, Addie Copeland, shooting your ridiculous husband the way you did, right there in his shop.”
“You murdered him?” I goggled, another word I understood for the first time that day.
“Hush!” said Mrs. Longstreet.
“But I want to know what’s going on!” I cried, feeling it was only my due.
“You might as well tell her, Judith,” grumbled Mrs. Copeland. “She’ll never shut up unless you do, and there’s no harm in it now.” She gave me a grim smile that made my mouth go dry and my head swim.
“I have work to do,” announced Mrs. Longstreet. “I’m always the one who has to do everything. If you want them to know, you tell them. I have to organize the men.” And, leaving Mrs. Copeland to cover us (I think that’s the correct term), she sashayed outside into the broiling heat.
Phil and I looked at each other.
And Mrs. Copeland started talking.
Chapter Fourteen
“It was all Emory’s fault,” she began.
“Your husband?” My voice was small.
The question must have struck Mrs. Copeland as stupid, because she sneered at me. “Do you know another gentleman in Rosedale named Emory, Miss Blue?”
I shook my head and refrained from stating that I hadn’t known her husband all that well, either. No sense being picky, under the circumstances.
“He was getting cold feet. Judith and I had planned the whole thing, and it was running flawlessly.” She frowned. “Well, except for that man you found in your aunt’s yard. That was a mistake. I don’t care what Judith says. It might have been all right if Jorge had dragged the body out onto the desert. Nobody would have found him there, and if they did, no one could possibly connect him to your aunt’s property.”
“You wanted Aunt Minnie’s house because of the wagons, didn’t you?”
“Indeed. We would have got it, too, if Emory hadn’t succumbed to his fidgets. Silly man. He’d always been a silly man.”
“What about Mr. O’Dell?” Phil nudged me in the ribs again, but I figured that as long as Mrs. Copeland was in a chatty mood, I’d keep her talking. For all I knew, when she stopped talking, she’d start shooting, and I wanted to postpone that for as long as possible.
“What about Mr. O’Dell?” Mrs. Copeland appeared puzzled for a moment, then her brow unfurrowed. “Oh, him. Judith asked him to act as a go-between. Between her and your aunt. About buying her property.”
“Who conked Phil on the head?”
“I did that.” She shot Phil a malevolent frown. “He was snooping.”
“But . . .” I was confused, darn it. “But what’s in Minnie’s yard? I mean, all your bottles and crates are in this cave, a good half-mile away from her house.”
“You’re not a very observant child, are you?” The scorn in Mrs. Copeland’s voice was thick enough to cut with a knife.
While I didn’t want to agree with her, I decided it
would probably be better not to argue since she was the one with the gun. “I guess not. I never saw anything there but a chicken coop.”
“And a small hill right behind it.”
“A small . . .” I considered the layout of Minnie’s side yard. “Yeah. There’s a little rise there. But it’s . . . well . . . nothing. It’s a small rise, is all.”
“There’s an opening to the cave there, Miss Blue. It’s generally covered with dried weeds and bracken.” She gestured at Phil with her shotgun. “He started snooping around, I guess when the boys were loading the far cave that runs under your aunt’s house.”
“Oh. Well, for heaven’s sake. I guess that accounts for the noises we heard in the night time.”
“I guess it does.” She sneered again.
Phil was frowning hard, but he didn’t speak.
“Is Dr. Longstreet in on it, too?”
“Good Lord, no! Elbert has never performed an illegal deed in his life. He is terribly persuadable, though, and Judith didn’t have any trouble in convincing him to move to Rosedale. God! Why anyone in his right mind would want to live here, I have no idea.”
“Um . . . you’re here,” I pointed out. “In Rosedale, I mean.”
Under his breath, Phil muttered, “Annabelle!” I wished he’d just let me alone. My questions weren’t doing any harm–at least, I hoped they weren’t–and I really wanted to know this stuff.
“Believe me,” said Mrs. Copeland, sounding just like Mrs. Longstreet in the snobbishness department, “living in Rosedale wasn’t my idea.”
“Say, are you and Mrs. Longstreet related?”
“We’re sisters,” she admitted.
That might explain a lot. I wondered if the rest of the family had inherited the sisters’ criminal tendencies. Mr. Withers had kind of skimmed over stuff like family characteristics and criminal tendencies in his psychology class.
