skeletons (18 page)

“How d’you like them apples?” she beamed. “Who says the Old West is gone?”

Story hour. I could visualize the big round eyes every Wednesday and Saturday. I could guess what treasures and nightmares Millicent Mills had given the children of Harding for fifty-five years. Children not her own.

“Why did Word do it?” I asked.

“He must have had a grudge against Pingo. I mean, to plan it all out. A mortal grudge. What?”

She waved a warning finger. “I told you, I won’t talk about the living. Pingo’s very much alive, the little devil. And rich—have you seen the Diego Riveras in his office? Do you know how much land he owns? And powerful.”

“Then what’s the point of the story?”

“Well, they did an autopsy, and Tom Word really was dying of cancer.”

“Oh.” I forced a smile. I’d have to suffer the sauce, have to lead her. “Very interesting. That takes care of Word–Tom the son, not Francis the father, the juryman. And Turnbow and VanDellen—they died of natural causes. What about Shelley?”

“Ah. Ah.” I had given her a cue. “He was murdered by a robber. In 1917, the year after the second trial. Shot through the heart. Only he wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t?”

“Oh no. Doc Shelley killed himself.”

“Come on now.”

“You listen, Butters. Get the picture. One winter night in his office. He writes a note—’To Whom It May Concern.’ Then he injects poison in his arm. His wife phones–no answer. An hour later, no answer. She calls Blaise Gilmore, the sheriff, asks him to see what’s what. He goes to Shelley’s office, finds him dead, and the hypodermic, reads the note, calls Charles Vaught. He was judge by then. He’d run against Obed Cox in the fall and beaten him. Well, as I was saying, the judge arrives, reads the note. ‘Blaise,’ he says, ‘we can’t have this. We can’t have a suicide. We’ll have to make it look like robbery, and a murder. I’ll take his wallet, you find his cashbox, take the money, strew the checks around. I’ll be responsible for the needle and note.’ So they do these things. Now come here, sit in my chair.”

I went round the desk. She stood. “Here, sit down,” she directed. “You’re Jack Shelley, dead, slumped forward, head down on the desk.” I slumped forward, head down. “Now. I’m the judge. I raise you up and back, so you’re sitting.” She raised me, held me erect by a shoulder. “‘All right, Blaise,’ I say, ‘get out your gun and shoot him through the heart.’ ‘Charley, I can’t do it,’ says Blaise. ‘Why not? Are we committing a crime? Can you murder a dead man?’ Blaise can’t do it, though—after all, he’s the county sheriff. ‘All right, goddammit,’ says the judge, ‘if you can’t, I will.’ So they change places. Blaise gives him his gun.”

She skipped around the desk, leaned over it opposite me, poked a gnarled finger like the muzzle of a gun into my chest.

“
Boom!
Charles Vaught shoots Jack Shelley through the heart! Without batting an eye! Charley Vaught—the old judge—was a terrible man, terrible! If you don’t believe me, look at his portrait in the courthouse. He shot a dead man! He did! I know!”

She had me on my feet, enthralled. “

“How—how can you know all this?”

“Blaise told me.”

“Why would he tell you?”

She smiled.

“Why would he tell anybody?”

She almost took a bow.

“He was my lover.”

“Oh,” I said.

I suppose I gaped at her.

“Oh,” I said.

As in a minuet, we circled the desk again, took our original places.

“He was married,” she said. “But he gave me this.” She extended her hand, showed me the gold band. “I’ve worn it ever since. And he told me about Jack Shelley because it was on his conscience and he had no one else to tell. He took his guilt to the grave.”

“What was in the note Shelley left?”

“I don’t know. Blaise didn’t say and I didn’t dare ask him.”

“Why did Judge Vaught say they couldn’t have a suicide?”

“Ditto.”

I was battle-weary. For a pacifist, an antigun nut, a self-proclaimed-and-proud-of-it coward, there had been too much gunfire in my life lately. “Millie, may I have a tot of your elixir?”

“Sure thing, partner.” She dived gladly for the Jack Daniel’s.

“Cheers,” I said, and had one.

“Salud,”
she said, and had her own. “My,” she said, licking her lips, “my I’ve waited a long time to tell those stories!”

“You’re a one-woman show,” I said. “But what’ve we got? The only link between the two trials is that the same four men, solid citizens I gather, served on both juries. Three of them died of natural causes, and much later. No cause and effect there. The fourth suicided the year after, and the judge then and the sheriff made it look like murder. Why, we don’t know. And the son of one of the four tried to kill the present sheriff fifty years later because he had a grudge about something. What, we don’t know. So where are we, then? Where do I go from here?”

“Don Turnbow,” she said. “And maybe young Doc Shelley—he’s a sweetie, he’s done wonders for my arthritis. And certainly poor Charley Vaught Jr. The judge. If anyone can put a bug in your ear, he can.”

“The living descendants.”

“The only.”

“If they’ll talk.”

“They probably won’t.”

I picked up the sheaf of old
Graphic
pages, passed them back. “Millie,” I said, “give me a break. Unbosom yourself. What in hell is this town hiding?”

“I told you, Butters. It’s a grand place to live.”

“And die. Violently.”

“Pooh.”

“Millie.”

“The people are good and kind and generous. The children are—”

“Millie.”

She pulled a hankie from somewhere under her sweater, pushed the purple butterfly glasses up over her titty-pink hair, dabbed at her eyes.

“Please, Millie. I’m not here just to dig up the local dirt, believe me. I don’t want to find anything evil or ugly. I hate evil. But if there’s something malignant under Harding’s skin, isn’t it better for all concerned if we locate it and razor it out? Isn’t that what you’d honestly prefer yourself?”

I had cut too close to her civic bone. She blew her nose like a barrage, stuffed the hankie, went over, like a woman, to a counteroffensive. “You’re holding out on me, too,” she accused. “Why are you doing all this, if not for a book? Who sent you? Tyler Vaught?”

I bit my tongue. To tell her about Tyler would be to open a can of very irrelevant worms. And she was not the safest repository for secrets, not with Jack Daniel’s around to unlock her lips.

“Tyler Vaught—wasn’t it?”

“You won’t talk about the living,” I reminded her. “Neither will I.”

“I thought so,” she exulted. “And what about Crossworth and Sansom? They’ve got to be dead. You think they were murdered, don’t you?”

“I know they were.”

“Who did it?”

“Ditto.”

She glared at me. I acknowledged the impasse by standing, picking up my homburg. “I’m sorry, Millie. But thanks for all your help—I really appreciate. If it’s any satisfaction, I’ll be out of your hair in another twenty-four hours. By noon tomorrow.”

She sniffled, looked at me, looked around at her library, then at me, then pushed back her chair, sprang up, darted round the desk, grabbed me in her arms.

“I’m sorry, too,” she sniffled. “Oh you dear, dear writer. You dear dude.”

I put mine around her. She was so feathery. It was like holding a bird.

Suddenly she sensed something, pulled back, felt with one hand at my waist, unbuttoned my coat, took one horrified look, seized me by the elbows. “A gun! Oh mercy, mercy on us!”

To spare her, I buttoned. To cheer her, I teased. “But you love guns,” I said. “You love to go boom.”

“I love fiction,” she said. “It’s nonfiction I’m afraid of. Why do you think I nip now and again? Why do you think I’m an old maid? Oh please don’t be the third!”

“Third?”

“Murdered.”

“Good writers never die,” I consoled. “Only their copyrights expire.”

She hugged me again, gave me a grandmotherly kiss on the cheek. “Goodbye, dear boy,” she murmured. “Fly back here sometime and see me. Before I go. You and Frisby.”

I left Miss Millicent Mills. Between the bookcases, out the door, on with my hat. Down the street, facing me, the SIU sedan was parked. And down the street, in the other direction, a county sheriff’s patrol car. I couldn’t see either driver’s face because I had something in my eye. A tear?

I had forgotten to sign her books.

According to their headstones, Coye Turnbow had passed on in 1938, his wife Josephine in 1947. If there had been issue, they had not been buried here. According to his, Hazen VanDellen had gone in 1929. His wife Gladys was interred beside him, and a daughter, Junia. Francis Word had died in 1944. The suicide by shotgun of his son Thomas had in fact occurred in 1972.

A stone attested to it. A second son, Allan, a first lieutenant of Artillery, had fallen in Okinawa in 1945, had been brought home to New Mexico for reburial after the war. I found next the plot of Blaise Gilmore, once sheriff. He had indeed been thrown from a horse, fatally, in 1919. Beside him lay his wife, Veretta. A childless couple. Did she sleep uneasy, had she known her husband loved a librarian? Did he turn in dreams, recalling in torment he had been accessory to the slaying of a dead man? Then, beside the pair, a large sandstone slab, the grave of Dr. Jack Shelley, in 1917 killed twice over. A grim proximity. Sheriff and physician. This close together they could, they must, converse. Why in hell did you take poison, Doc? There was no need. Why did you and Charley put a bullet in me, Blaise, when I was already gone? There was no damn need.

I had come to Harding’s marble orchard to check Millie Mills’s stories. She was old. Her memory might be bent by bourbon. But they checked out, the dates at least. And also because loitering around graves was standard operating procedure for me these days. The cemetery was a cheerful place, studded with cypress trees, inlaid with grass. A small irrigation ditch bisected it diagonally, and clear running water from it sustained the green the year around. The graves were tended well. The sun was warm. On all four sides, a line of old protective tamarisks walled in a pleasant silence, walled out the disrespectful wind.

A car growled in, stopped behind the Rolls. A man strode toward me, grinding gravel. A young man big and burly, bearing a handlebar mustache like a war banner.

“Doctor,” I greeted him.

“Butters.”

“Nice day.”

“It was.”

“This is your grandfather’s grave?”

“You can read.”

“He died rather young. How?”

“He was shot. In a robbery attempt.”

I didn’t enlighten him. Timing, timing.

“What about your grandmother?”

“She moved away, with my father. To California.”

“All right, you were born there, grew up, went to med school, married, moved to Harding, started a practice, and one day I walked in inquiring about a hit-and-run and you let me read your report.”

“Public record.”

“Then I mentioned those two old trials and you flickered. You flickered.”

“The hell I did.”

“Why didn’t you tell me your grandfather served on both juries?”

“It was none of your goddamned business.”

I gauged him. He had followed me here, for some reason, and if I pushed him too far, he was big enough to palpate me to a pulp. I was a flyweight, and since I couldn’t duke it out with him, decided to demonstrate the fine art of fisticuffery.

“Doctor,” I said, “I’m not here in Harding to do you harm. I’m here for a few facts—and I’ve stumbled onto a few. For instance.” I started with a right cross to the jaw. “Max Sansom wasn’t hit by a car. He was murdered.”

“You’re a liar.”

A little fancy footwork, a feint with my left, then an uppercut. “He was tied under a car and dragged to death.”

“I ought to take you apart.”

I let him have the
coup de grâce
, a solid right to the solar plexus. “The coffin he was shipped in to New York was full of sand.”

He sagged.

“Furthermore, another writer, a guy named Crossworth, came out here four years ago, probably before you did, and nobody’s seen him since.”

He took the count. He turned, suddenly, put his broad back to me. Just then the SIU sedan pulled into the drive, parked behind the doctor’s car. The driver stayed behind the wheel.

“I hate to zap you, Doc, but I have to. These headstones say it like it is—there are only two male descendants of the men who served on those juries alive and living in Harding. You and Donald Turnbow. One of you has got to open up to me—and it ought to be you. You’re younger, you’ve got a wife and small children, you have the most to live for. So what about it? Your grandmother must have talked about the trials.”

“Never.”

“What about your father? Fathers confide in sons—what did your grandfather tell him?”

“Nothing.”

“What became of Buell Wood?”

“How would I know?”

“What happened to the four Mexicans?”

“They’re buried, down near the border.”

“No they’re not. I went down there, with a shovel. Those graves are empty.”

He was out on his feet but would not throw in the towel. Just then a man in a Sheriff’s Department uniform slunk out of a tamarisk tree at the far end of the cemetery and took a bearing on us.

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “I know you know what’s going on—if not all, then part. And I know you’re involved. That report of yours—I’ll accept you wrote it in good faith. You were new on the job and you took Pingo Chavez’ word it was hit-and-run. But it damned well wasn’t—so what does that do for your qualifications as county medical examiner? And by the way, when we leave here don’t pick up the phone to Pingo again. I listened outside your door when you called him that day in your office. I don’t know what he’s got on you—but don’t for God’s sake tell him how much I know. Not unless you want another death on your conscience. I mean mine. Crossworth’s and Sansom’s are enough.” I walked around the grave, faced him. “Say something. Tell me the truth. Don’t dig yourself in any deeper. Physician, heal thyself.”

Now, finally, Jack Shelley II hit the canvas. He sank, sat down. On his grandfather’s slab. Buried his face in his hands. “I can’t,” he mumbled through fingers. “I can’t.”