Murder on Wheels (9 page)

“Buck, Buck Keeley,” corrected the Inspector. “When I saw the name on the letter last night I remembered the old-fashioned idea about taking the Keeley-cure for drunks, see? Well, that ticketed the name in the back of my mind, and now when I see it again on the program here, I put two and two together.”

He stopped suddenly at the look on Miss Withers’ face. She wasn’t attacking her poached egg.

“Oscar Piper, are you holding out on me?”

He felt guilty. All too late he remembered that he hadn’t intended mentioning the letter under the kitchen table.

“Why, no, Hildegarde. I …”

“If that isn’t like a man! The superior sex, huh? So you had to look to your laurels this time? Just to prove to me that a woman can’t be a detective!”

The Inspector was nettled. But Miss Withers wouldn’t let him speak.

“All right, Oscar Piper. I was going to send a substitute down to my third grade classes for the rest of the month. But if that’s the way you feel about it, you can just go blundering ahead alone. And to think I very nearly married you!”

“But Hildegarde …”

Miss Withers shoved her egg away as if it had mortally offended her patrician nose, and seized her umbrella.

“Be reasonable, will you? I meant to tell you about that letter sometime. We’ll work on the case together.”

“I never want to work on another case anyhow,” Miss Withers informed him. “I hope I never hear of another murder nor meet another flatfooted detective as long as I live. I’m through, and I mean it. I haven’t the slightest interest in sleuthing …”

She was moving toward the door. But she stopped, suddenly, her cotton umbrella gripped tensely in her hand.

From somewhere within the vast expanses of the Garden, muffled by the intervening walls, there came a couple of dull
thump-thumps
… another …

It might have been the slamming of a door, or the backfiring of a dirty truck engine.

But it was neither of the two, and both Miss Withers and the Inspector knew it. There is something about the staccato bark of a forty-five calibre revolver that, once heard, is never confused with anything else.

The sound of shots came again, a regular fusillade.

Miss Withers raised her umbrella like a couched lance. “What in heaven’s name are you waiting for? Oscar, come on!”

The Inspector came on, swinging in the long stride that had won a silver cup or two in earlier Police Field Days. But all the same, Miss Withers, who had no interest in sleuthing, beat him through the entrance of the Garden by at least two lengths.

There was no sign of the janitor-like individual who had grudgingly given out information a few minutes before. The main entrance hall of the Garden was empty and almost dark, though a dim glow showed through an entrance marked “M to Q.”

They ran up a short slope of concrete, and came out high above the great bowl—the bowl which was more like a saucer now. The wide rim consisted of row upon row of board seats, and the oval in the center was bare, and scattered with tanbark. They stopped to take in a puzzling panorama.

The Inspector had never been in the Garden before when this center space was not filled with seats optimistically labelled “ringside” and faced toward a squared bit of canvas platform beneath glaring floodlights.

The floodlights were on full blast, and in their glare sat a big blonde girl on a big white horse, both of them as rigid as if cut out of marble. There was some sort of a dark screen or background behind them, against which smoke curled lazily upward from a cigarette between the lips of the girl. She wore pink tights and short boots, and in spite of the costume she might have posed as one of the Valkyrie.

As they watched, she raised her gloved hand in a quick signal, and from the shadows at the far end of the auditorium another horse and rider appeared, at full gallop.

This horse was a plump little red and white paint, and he ran by bunching up his body and kicking viciously at the ground as it passed by. His rider was a lean and lanky young man dressed only in shirt, black trousers, and high-heeled boots. With his left hand he held the reins loosely, and his right gripped a massive but business-like revolver.

As he swung past the waiting girl he leaned forward in the saddle and discharged his weapon in her general direction.

She did not, as Miss Withers had halfway expected, fall into a crumpled heap. She only took the cigarette out of her mouth, looked at it thoughtfully, and made an unprintable observation. The white horse switched his tail impatiently.

The male rider pulled his mount on its haunches and lit a cigarette of his own.

A small man in a derby rose suddenly from one of the front seats at the edge of the tanbark.

“Lousy,” he gave as his verdict. “Plenty lousy. You didn’t come within a mile of it, Laramie. Try it again.”

Laramie shrugged his shoulders and looked at the girl. “Rose moved her head,” he suggested, in the tone of one who does not expect to be believed.

“I moved nothing,” she said, in a soft yet penetrating drawl. “You’re getting the jitters worser every day, Laramie. Can’t you see out of the
good
eye, even? That slug was a good five inches away from the hot end of the cigarette. I could hear it go by.”

“All right, all right,” broke in the nervous man in the derby. “Try it again. You’ve either got to get a better average than one in three or else we’ll have to cut the number entirely—unless we go back to the way it was last year. We can’t go on using the fake cigarette on the thread. Somebody is going to catch on, the way they did about the cactus burrs under the saddles on those broncs in Chi, and we’ll get the razz in the papers.”

“All right, we’ll try it again,” said Laramie, reining up the paint. “But I tell you this for the last time, Carrigan, I ain’t going back to the act the way it was last year. If we do the number at all, I’m holding the gun and Rose is holding the cigarette, see? I ain’t going to let any dame throw lead at me.”

“Well, why not? Rose is as good a shot as you, and she doesn’t get rattled as easy. I don’t see why after two years of it, you have to switch places with her.”

“Neither do I, for that matter,” said Rose, her red lips curled scornfully. Miss Withers and the Inspector by this time had crept down unnoticed almost to the ring itself. And the little school-teacher couldn’t help noticing that a glance was exchanged between the sharpshooter on the horse and the human target, which was not altogether professional jealousy. There was a mutual understanding, and a mutual antagonism, hidden there.

“All right, get on with it. The rest of the boys will be here in a little while, and then we’ll have to quit monkeying with your number. All set?” He slid back into his seat again, but then he noticed that the girl was looking over his shoulder.

“Rubes,
Carrigan!” sang out Rose, in a voice that was all too clear. “They must have left those front doors on the latch again.”

Carrigan whirled around to face the intruders. “Look here,” he said belligerently, “this is a private rehearsal, not a public park. The performance doesn’t start until two o’clock this afternoon. If you want to come back then, buy a ticket.”

“He’s wrong,” said Miss Withers softly. “The performance has already begun.”

“Go on, scram,” yelled Carrigan. “Find your way out the way you came in or I’ll call a cop and have you thrown out.”

Inspector Piper smiled faintly, and squared his shoulders. “Oh, so you’ll call a cop and have us thrown out?”

“That’s what I said! An’ maybe I won’t bother to call a cop!”

The Inspector flashed his badge in the palm of his hand. “If you want to call a cop, you don’t need to strain your voice, Mr. Carrigan. I’m Inspector Piper of the Homicide Squad, and this is my assistant. I came up here to ask you some questions.”

“Why, sure, Inspector! Howdy, ma’am. Have yourself a couple of seats. I didn’t get you at first. Anything I can do … I suppose this is about licenses for the guns we use in the show? They told us it would be all right as long as the boys didn’t wear ’em in the street.”

“No,” admitted Inspector Piper. “I’m not bothering with the Sullivan Law these days. I just wanted to ask you a question or two about a man named Keeley, Buck Keeley?”

The girl suddenly galvanized into action, slid out of her saddle. She strode toward the little group, her fists clenched and her eyes blazing. For the first time Miss Withers realized what a formidable person this Valkyrie of the plains could be.

“What do you want to know about my brother?” she demanded fiercely.

The Inspector stared at her. “So Buck Keeley of the Lazy Y ranch is your brother, eh? Well, maybe you can tell me where he was between five-thirty and seven o’clock last night?”

She didn’t hesitate for the fraction of a second. “I sure can, Marshal. I don’t know what you want him for, but my brother wasn’t into any mischief last night. Because he was with me, in my room at the Senator. I was feeling low, ‘count of some hard luck I’ve had lately, and Buck had chuck with me up in my room on the tenth floor. He bunks downstairs with the boys, but he most generally chows with me.”

“I see. What time did your brother join you?”

“We went over from here together as soon as the afternoon show was done and the horses put back in the corral we rigged up in an old warehouse down the road. That must have been about five.”

“And your brother was with you all the time until after dinner?”

“That’s what I said, Marshal. All the time. Just ask the rest of the boys. Ask Laramie here. Hey, Laramie, wasn’t Buck with me for dinner at the hotel last night?”

The lean and lanky young man came cantering up on the paint, wiping his face. “Huh?” Miss Withers noticed that he had sticking plaster over his left eye.

“I asked you, wasn’t Buck with me in the hotel at five-thirty last night?”

“Him? Why, er—yes, of course he was. Sure he was.” Laramie turned to Carrigan, and his good eye dropped a quarter of an inch. Miss Withers pretended not to notice it.

“Hey, Tom, wasn’t Buck with his sister last night around chow time?”

Up to this time Carrigan had stood there, chewing at his moustache. “Why sure he was. He went right over to the hotel after the show. You must be thinking of somebody else, Inspector.” He was a little more eager to agree than seemed necessary to Miss Withers.

“Good,” grunted Inspector Piper. He faced the girl again. “By the way,” he said casually, “are you any relation to the Keeley family that runs a dude ranch out at Medicine Hat, Wyoming?”

She shook her head. “Our ranch isn’t at Medicine Hat, Marshal. That’s where we get our mail, but the ranch is a long drive from the railroad … up in the Johnson’s Hole country on the edge of the Tetons.”

“But you and your brother run a dude ranch there?”

She nodded. “Why not? This rodeo business only is good for a few months in the spring and fall. Everybody does it out there.”

“I was just asking,” said the Inspector heavily. “A young fellow I know was out there this summer. Laurie Stait was the name.”

If he expected her to show any emotion, the Inspector was disappointed. “Yeah, he was with us for a while. Guess he had a good time, too.”

“Heard from him since he came back to the city?” The Inspector’s voice was thick with sarcasm.

But the blonde Valkyrie shook her head. “No, I haven’t heard from him. Nor my brother either.”

“You’re lying,” said the Inspector soberly. “You see, we’ve found your letters in Laurie Stait’s bureau … yours and your brother’s, too. Don’t you think you’d better talk?” He let his voice become wheedling and persuasive.

Her eyes were narrow. “Marshal, you think I’m a hick, don’t you? You’re trying to bluff me, and you aren’t getting anywhere. You didn’t find any letters, or you wouldn’t be trying to trap me into saying something about them. Come on, let’s see the letters you think I wrote to that tenderfoot of a Stait kid. I don’t see what difference it makes, though. Is it any skin off
your
back porch?”

If this was a bluff she was carrying it through, Miss Withers decided. Good heavens, hadn’t the girl even seen the newspapers that blared from every corner this morning?

The Inspector asked her that. Rose Keeley shook her head. “We don’t truck much with newspapers where I come from,” she admitted. “Why should I ought to have read the paper this morning particular? The only reading material I got any use for is the Montgomery Ward catalogue and True Story. Besides, we got something to do besides read newspapers—or stand around here and talk to you, either.”

The Inspector, by adroit manipulation on the part of his tongue, pushed his dead cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. His lower lip slid out a little farther than was necessary.

“Then you didn’t read the papers, or hear the news, eh? I suppose it’ll come as a considerable shock to you to know that Laurie Stait was murdered last night!”

The girl’s eyes widened, in what Miss Withers swore to be honest surprise. “Laurie Stait
murdered
… last night?”

“Yes, murdered,” said the Inspector savagely. He was angry that he had shot his bolt without securing any damaging admission from the girl in the moment of shock. “He was riding along in his brother’s roadster, and somebody dropped a lariat over his head, slick and pretty.”

The Inspector didn’t need to finish. He’d secured his effect, after all. Miss Withers cried out as she saw the blood drain from the girl’s blank face. Then Rose Keeley’s splendid big body suddenly went lifeless as an empty sack.

She fell face down in the tanbark, and for a long moment the rest of them watched her, powerless to move. Even at that moment Miss Withers could not help noticing the look of utter unbelief on the faces of Carrigan and the rider, Laramie. They could not have been more nonplussed if Rose Keeley had suddenly disappeared in a pillar of smoke.

But she had not disappeared. She was sprawled like an empty sack in the tanbark.

Miss Withers moved to pick her up, but Laramie White was quicker.

“I
’LL … I’LL GET SOME
water …” gasped Miss Withers. But Carrigan elbowed her aside.