No Second Wind (The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries Book 3) Page 17

  Another record came on, and our talk went off.

  Charleston was about to take a sip of the whiskey when a look came on his face. Later I was to call it a look of wonder, then recognition. He got up, his glass barely touched. His lips said, “Come on!”

  We climbed back in the Special. Once we were rolling, I said, “May I ask where to?”

  “To get Cleaver’s truck.”

  I didn’t understand but didn’t push, respecting Charleston’s mood, which appeared to shy off from talk.

  So we wheeled along, silent, over the new-breathing land where, I thought, life was stirring under the warming soil, where gophers would appear before long and the carpet flowers bloom.

  Just once did he speak again while the Special moved along. That was to say, “Dry year this year. Hard on the farmers.”

  “Plenty of time for snow yet,” I answered.

  He didn’t reply, having dismissed the subject already. We passed the mourner’s car, minus the mourner, bound back for town.

  Three cars were parked by the Cleaver house. Inside were old Mr. and Mrs. Whitney, Ernest Linderman, Judge and Mrs. Church, and the widow, who let us in without comment other than a hello. On the table were a couple of casseroles, a baked turkey, two loaves of bread, a cake and a pie, plus extras. After we had greeted the company, Mrs. Cleaver, as if yielding to the demands of the occasion, said, “Even with a sick grandpa, that nice Anita Dutton found time to bake a cake. Omar Test brought it over. Want something to eat?”

  I felt Charleston’s eyes on me and heard him say, “I believe we have time to sample Miss Dutton’s cake.”

  It was good cake, sweet and moist as I liked it.

  We chatted a little while we munched. I had noticed before that post-burial parties appeared perky and light of heart, and I wondered again if that were to bolster the bereft or to celebrate survival. A man is dead: long live us.

  Charleston maneuvered Mrs. Cleaver aside. “I wonder if we could borrow your truck for a day or two, Mrs. Cleaver?” he asked. “I hate to suggest it at this time, but it might help us in our investigation.”

  She answered, “I ain’t going anywhere,” and took keys from a hook on a cupboard.

  We went outside and looked at the truck. There was nothing in the bed but the big toolbox, a large plastic sack, empty, and four short fence posts. I was about to remove all but the fixed-in-place toolbox when Charleston shook his head. Then he asked, “Mind driving it?” I didn’t.

  “Park it in one of our slots,” he told me.

  So, rattling along after him, I drove the truck in, asking myself the meaning, the significance, the why of this old bundle of bolts. Cleaver couldn’t have been shot from inside it, not if we were to credit the evidence. Neither could the thing speak.

  Charleston was waiting when I parked the truck. Before I could get out, he climbed into the passenger’s seat. He studied the dash and began nodding his head. He asked, “Know anything about tape decks?”

  “Very little,” I answered and was exaggerating at that. I must have been the only young man and one of the few of any age who knew almost nothing about tapes and sound gadgets. I could take music or leave it alone. Tin ear, classmates had said.

  “No load in this thing,” Charleston said, pointing to a slot. “Run to the drugstore. Get a tape, eight track.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I trotted to the store, a block and a half away. The clerk, a new girl, must have thought I was crazy, buying any old eight-track tape and rushing off with it. Three or four dogs were sniffing around the truck.

  Charleston took a quick look at the tape before inserting it. “The saints go marching in,” he said and touched a button.

  My head blew off.

  I had listened to juke boxes turned on full blast. In crowded bars I had been afflicted with the caterwauling of singers and the exaggerated tones of guitars. I had followed close to brass bands tooting and thumping out Sousa. They didn’t compare.

  I jumped out of the truck, which was shaking in all its tin timbers. The saints kept marching in while heads popped out of courthouse windows and passing bodies were arrested in full flight.

  Charleston turned off the sound and got out. He mounted the truck bed and went to the toolbox. Two self-locking latches secured it. He worked at them, then said to me, “Get a screwdriver from the Special.” With it he wrenched off the latches. The box opened from the front, not the top. Two speakers crowded the box; I didn’t see any tools. Charleston let himself down. Tad Frazier had appeared from the office. Charleston told him, “Watch it. No tinkering.”

  Charleston led the way, shooing off dogs and explaining to the small crowd that had gathered around, “Testing. Just testing.” Like saints, we marched into his office.

  Seated, he said as an aside, “It would have been even louder with the box open.”

  “I can hardly hear you.”

  “Head ringing, huh?”

  “If it’s still there.”

  He raised his voice. “One mystery solved. Get it?”

  I answered, “Glimmers.”

  “Cleaver knew his electronics,” he went on, veering away from what I wanted to hear. “I don’t understand the mechanics myself, but he wired the thing up, leaving no open sign, and he’s sure to have put in a booster. That accounts for the volume.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cleaver may have got his idea somewhere else. That notion occurs to me.”

  “Where else?”

  “From a book.”

  I just looked at him, and he went on. “You didn’t notice the books in Cleaver’s house? No. Well, two of them were by a man named Jim Corbett. He hunted man-eating tigers in India. I read those books years ago.”

  I said, “Yes?”

  “I dug one story out of my memory. It told that one man-eating tiger, just one, kept thousands of construction workers cowering in camp, afraid to go out on the job. Cleaver might have gone on from there.”

  “With wolves, huh?”

  “If one tiger could intimidate thousands, a pack of wolves ought to scare off a few.”

  “It almost did.”

  “We’ll never prove the connection, though the theory makes sense. And Cleaver had another thing going for him. Mutilated animals. People were, are, still spooky about them.”

  “But one man couldn’t unload a full-grown steer unless he had a dump truck.”

  “He could if he placed it on rollers. That’s what those bob-tailed fence posts were for. Cleaver stole behind the row camps at night, no lights, and just rolled off the carcass. No sweat except the fear of being seen.” He paused while I nodded and then resumed. “He worked to make the steer look as if it had been mutilated by wolves. The miners were quick to think it had been. Some probably do yet. But there was a flaw that trained men could see. The steer was his own, and he had to cut off and scratch off the rib band. Wolves wouldn’t have gnawed there, not while better bites were available.”

  “I see, but what about that gang of dogs—wolves to the miners—that gathered in the alley?”

  “There’s an answer to that, too, I think. Suppose Cleaver’s old bitch dog came in heat. Suppose he put her in a plastic sack so as to confine the scent, took her to the alley at night and walked her up and down while she left her sign. Then back into the bag and away. You saw the sack. You noticed just now that the open sack was attracting dogs. To keep in the scent, Cleaver had tied it at his dog’s neck while transporting her. There’s a piece of cord in the truck you might not have noticed.”

  So he had answers to everything, I thought, feeling a long shot less than bright. Answers to everything but two things, so I asked, “What about shooting up the Chicken Shack? What about killing Pudge Eaton? That’s off the mark.”

  Charleston nodded his head. “You’re right there. We’ll probably never have proof that Cleaver did the shooting. But look at it this way. From the evidence we have we know how fixed in purpose he was. Suppose, then, that the shooting was
a first effort. Perhaps he thought at the time that the shooting would be enough. Suppose he hadn’t hit on the idea of borrowing from Jim Corbett. Of course he didn’t mean to hit Eaton, and, if he did kill him, that fact must have come as a shock. Men react differently to the knowledge of guilt. Having killed a man, Cleaver may have become all the more determined to carry on. A crime committed often frees onward forces. It points the course. Proof or not, I’m satisfied that was the way it was.”

  One question remained. “So how was it that Mr. Willsie’s window got broken?”

  He was a long time in answering and after a silence didn’t answer at all. “I’m fiddling around in my mind, Jase,” he said, and fiddled some more. At last he asked, “Cleaver had a reputation for honesty. Right?”

  “Some people thought he was slow in his mind, but everybody said he was honest down to the quick.”

  “An honest man, then. He couldn’t do anything to square up with Pudge Eaton. But Willsie? Maybe I have the ghost of a hunch.”

  He turned to the telephone, got an outside line and presently said, “Chick Charleston here, Mr. Willsie. How are you? Yes, fine. Thanks. I’m wondering if anyone ever came forward to pay for your broken window. No? I see. Good-bye, then.”

  To me he said, “Just a chance, Jase, and hardly that. We never inspected Cleaver’s truck, except for the toolbox and the bed. Go waste some time on it, will you?”

  I took the ignition key and went to the truck. The key didn’t fit the glove compartment, but a screwdriver sprang the lid. There was nothing important inside. I dismounted and moved the seat and there it was, a wrinkled envelope that bore the name in block letters, MR. LEONARD WILLSIE. I took it to Charleston without opening it.

  His eyes lit up when he saw it. He slit the seal. Inside were two fifty-dollar bills. “The long shot paid off,” he said. “Cleaver broke Willsie’s window so as to involve the strip miners, but he was going to pay Willsie for it. How to get the money to him, that was the question.”

  For a full moment Charleston was silent. His tone was musing when he spoke again. “Cleaver was a better man than anyone thought, far more intelligent than we gave him credit for. And was he set on preserving his ranch! I wonder what would have been his next move. I wonder what he would have done, given time for his second wind.”

  He rose and took a slow turn around his chair. “He had people believing in wolves because they heard wolves. Six miles they carry on a still Arctic night, so Doolittle says. How far on a tape amplified? What’s more, he had actually shot a wolf, probably a single stray from the north. He could, and I bet did, tell about it and show the pelt to the doubtful. Strong evidence. Some schemer, that Cleaver. I salute him.”

  It was back to business when he sat down again. “Who shot Cleaver? That’s next. Find the wolf tape, and you find the killer.”

  He said “you,” I thought. He meant me. He still wanted me to believe the case was my own.

  22

  I had been told to make my own hours, and I was making them the following night when Charleston rang the bell. Mother went to the door and, pleased to see him, invited him in. Bipsie—no, Rex—made a friendly fuss. Nothing would do then but that Mother go to the kitchen, bring in a piece of pie and a cup of coffee and hand them to him. We exchanged some meaningless small talk.

  When Charleston had finished his pie, he turned to me. “Nothing new at my end of the line,” he said.

  I spoke a little defensively, not having visited the office all day. “I chased down the last of the wolf hunters and took their statements. No help.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he answered. “It was a long shot.”

  Mother got up, took his plate and cup and said, “Please excuse me, you two. I have things to do in the kitchen.”

  She didn’t. She just thought it fit to absent herself and let the men talk.

  Charleston took a thin cigar from his pocket and lit up. I pushed an ashtray closer to him. After a puff or two he said, “Let’s recap, Jase.”

  “The whole case?”

  “Start with Cleaver out alone with his truck. Put yourself in his place. Use his methods.”

  “All right, but I don’t see much point to it, Mr. Charleston.”

  “There probably isn’t any, but it can’t hurt. Go ahead.”

  “It must have been this way: Cleaver drove out and parked his truck here and there, according to what little breeze there was. He wanted the sound to carry into the town. Then he opened the toolbox and turned on the wolves.”

  “Yes.”

  “If he saw car lights coming his way, he turned off the recorder, slammed shut the toolbox, took his rifle and walked away from the truck. He could say he was hunting wolves, too.”

  “The man who shot him sneaked up on foot? That’s what you think?”

  “A car without lights might have come pretty close, but I doubt it.”

  “So do I,” Charleston said. “Was the sound still turned on when he was shot?”

  “I guess so. Does it matter?”

  Charleston ignored the question. “Say a man sneaked up on foot. Who was he, and why did he fire?”

  “Some enemy, I suppose.”

  “An enemy, or someone annoyed by the hoax? Someone deeply resentful?”

  “Who could be that annoyed?”

  Charleston put a match to his dead cigar. “A scared man. A man whose wife had been scared. Whose kids had. Does that hold water?”

  “Not much to me,” I replied. “If he had caught on to Cleaver, why not just expose him?”

  “Good question. But there’s no telling what a man badly scared will do when he finds he’s been made a fool of. Maybe the killer wanted to confront Cleaver. Maybe they got into a quarrel. That’s possible.”

  “A long time ago you told me anything’s possible. But it’s a big order, talking to everyone who might have been spooked. Anyhow, they wouldn’t admit it. What’s the use?”

  Charleston smiled after he had blown out a plume of smoke. “I’m just bouncing ideas around for whatever benefit they may be to you. Don’t be upset.”

  “I’m offended because I’m not getting anywhere. I’m offended because I don’t know which way to turn. I’m a wonderful deputy.”

  “Just as I’m a wonderful sheriff, being as much at a loss as you are. Another nagger, Jase. Why did the killer steal the tape?”

  “If he did steal it.”

  “If he did. All we know is that it’s missing. All we know is that it wasn’t on Cleaver’s body. All we know is that it didn’t jump out and run. So it must have been stolen. That leaves the big why.”

  “Keepsake?”

  “Maybe. A damn dangerous one.”

  “I think of some maybe crazy things.”

  “Like what?”

  “We have one man dead on each side. That’s how feuds start, isn’t it?”

  “Unlikely,” he answered. “Feuds are family affairs. They’re personal. The cause is forgotten, mired down in family hate. Dead end there, I think.”

  “Maybe I ought to find out where Cleaver got the tape?”

  “I don’t see how that could help us.”

  Charleston rose from his chair. “All right for now, Jase. I doubt we’ve made any progress.”

  It turned out we hadn’t. Charleston had hoped, I gathered, for some fresh idea through the rehash of the case. Dead end again.

  An uneventful day passed and part of another. Uneventful in a sense. Hysteria doesn’t die overnight. Old fears linger in spite of proof and assurances. So foolish calls kept coming in. We answered some of them and found Labradors, setters, German shepherds and one toy terrier. No wolves.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere, and a feeling of urgency, combined with defeat, built up in me. Charleston didn’t question me. He didn’t push. But I sensed his impatience, not with me alone but with himself, the whole staff and continuing bafflement. On foot and by car I roamed the streets and the countryside, thinking, looking, asking questions—and standing still
. When asked about progress what could we say? Just that we’re stumped?

  I went back on shift—which meant I was seldom off it. Hours put in didn’t count. My salary was a gift, unearned.

  It didn’t help that the fun had gone out of Doolittle. Not only the fun but the sense of companionship. In his quiet and uncommon presence, I felt depressed. It didn’t help that Anita kept putting me off, pleading her grandfather’s illness.

  I talked to Charleston about Doolittle. “Have I hurt his feelings somehow? Have I offended him?” I asked. “To me, maybe only to me, he’s a different Ike.”

  “Let it ride, Jase,” Charleston answered. “It’s not your fault. It may be some trouble of his own. People have a habit of visiting their moods on others. I wouldn’t pay undue attention.”

  But what was undue attention? What would come out in the eventual wash, if anything? How keep a friendship when you felt the friendship was breaking? By distance? By unconcern? Those tactics wouldn’t work. I couldn’t accept them.

  On the afternoon of the second day I cornered Doolittle alone in the sheriff’s office. In his hand was a paper cup of office coffee. “It’s brewed fresh,” he said. “Get yourself some. I have to be going.”

  “You don’t have to go anywhere, and you know it. I want to talk to you, Ike.”

  “Talk away.”

  “Something’s eating on you. What is it?”

  “If there is, it will pass.” He wouldn’t look at me. He looked at the cup in his hand.

  “If I can help—”

  “Who needs help?”

  “Damn it, Ike, you do! That’s who. Or maybe it’s me. What have I done to make you so offish? I thought we were friends.”

  “Sure we’re friends, Jase. Always will be, I hope.”

  “You don’t act friendly.”

  “Sorry.” He took a mouthful of coffee and chewed it as if he had never tasted coffee before. “Things been on my mind.”

  “What things?”

  “If you have to know, I’m quitting this job.”

  “The hell you are!” My words held unbelief. They burst out of me.

  “I’m not cut out for it.”