The Genuine Article (The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  “Had a regular goddamn furrow in his head,” Becker explained to me. “Not a furrow, though. No skin turned over. A trench-like, it was.” As Charleston got up, so did he. I saw then that his legs must have been shaped by a horse, a fat one.

  “Jase, take time to call Doc Yak and Felix Underwood. Then we’ll go. I’ll bring you back to town, Becker.”

  Neither Doc nor Felix seemed delighted at being called so early, though Felix perked up when I said the dead man was Grimsley. Grimsley’s estate could afford funeral expenses. Doc Yak wouldn’t have been pleased in any case. He said over the phone, “Damn your young soul, you said you weren’t contagious.”

  We filed out to the car. I had a pad and a couple of pencils. I knew something about shorthand, though I seldom used it, relying on my memory instead.

  The car was Charleston’s old Special, which could run like a jackrabbit and had even more clearance. It was quiet enough that, from the back seat, I could hear what Charleston and Becker said.

  “And you told me you were first up?” Charleston asked.

  “Yep. Always am. Been with Grimsley ten years. I was comin’ from the bunkhouse when I saw him lyin’ there.”

  “Already dead?”

  “Dead as a slab of lutefisk. Cold as a fish, too.”

  “And you got right in the pickup?”

  “Sure. Didn’t need to be told what to do, not with the boss dead. So here I am, and out of a job to boot.”

  “What was Grimsley doing?”

  “Nothin’. I said he was dead.”

  “Sorry. Before then, I mean. Why outside?”

  “How do I know? Goin’ or comin’ from the privy, I guess.”

  “No indoor plumbing? A man like Grimsley?”

  “None of that. He always said a flush toilet constipated him.”

  The country roads had improved in the two years I had been away. The county had bought a rock crusher, which had pulverized some boulders and given a beating to others that a scraper had tumbled off to the side. A light rain was falling, and the landscape was misted so much that the mountains to the west were just hazy lines. We made good time.

  Grimsley’s place had a verandahed house at the front and a helter-skelter of outbuildings in the rear. A calf, an orphan I supposed, was blatting out there.

  “Who else is here?” Charleston asked as Becker led the way to the back.

  “Nobody,” Becker answered. “Damn cook up and left last week, and Grimsley was scouting around for more help. We been bachin’. A little more of his grub and I’d be lyin’ dead with him. There, now. See for yourself.”

  Grimsley lay, face up, near the back doorstep. He had his clothes on, the same clothes I had seen in town. His bullet mouth was open, but what struck you, first off, was the indentation in his bare skull. At the moment one glimpse was enough for me. The depression appeared long, blood-spotted and at its edges swollen and red.

  Charleston knelt by the body. “You haven’t moved him?” he asked Becker.

  “Not by an inch, except I felt his wrist. No pulse, and his hand was as cold as hung beef.”

  Charleston lifted the head, which moved stiff. The mark made by whatever had killed Grimsley ran from front to back, over the curves. Charleston put out his hand to pick at the wound. What I saw chilled me then—four red hairs, medium long. It was as if the skin-graft head had sprouted growth overnight. Charleston put the hairs in an envelope, saying nothing.

  Doc Yak drove up, scratching gravel. He was out of his car before it came to a stop. The car quit rolling when it bumped the corner of a shed, which put a small dent in one fender. Felix Underwood followed him, driving an ambulance.

  Doc Yak bustled up to us, his satchel in his hand. He didn’t take time for a greeting. He bent down and looked at the wound. His hand explored it and felt the flesh of wrist and chest.

  Charleston waited until Doc straightened up. Then he asked, “How long would you say?”

  “How in hell do I know?”

  “Dead for some time, I would say.” It was Underwood speaking. He had moved up beside Doc.

  Charleston said, “That’s kind of indefinite. Come off it now, Doc. Give me an estimate.”

  “Six, seven, eight hours. I’ll know better later.”

  “Couldn’t be more than seven,” Becker put in. “I found him about sunup.”

  “And never even put a towel over his face?” Underwood said, respecting the dead. “You could have done that.”

  “Sure. I could have planted him, too, and saved you the trouble.”

  Charleston was casting around, maybe looking for footprints, looking for anything that might be a clue. He turned toward me and shook his head.

  Underwood asked him, “Well?”

  “Might as well. The body doesn’t tell me anything more.”

  “Just the old blunt-instrument job, huh?”

  Charleston’s hand ran the shape of a skull in the air. “When did blunt instruments get flexible?”

  “Should have seen that. Make it a blackjack.”

  I helped Underwood place the body on a stretcher and carry it and roll the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Already Doc Yak was reversing his car, though he bumped the shed again first, having chosen the wrong gear.

  Charleston wanted to inspect the house. Becker led the tour. We found nothing inside but the disorder expected of a man living alone.

  We were silent on the return, silent until we were again in the sheriff’s office where, after Jimmy Conner had reported a quiet morning, we sat down.

  “A few more questions, Becker,” Charleston said. “I gather you didn’t hear anyone prowling around last night?”

  “That’s what I told you, and that’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the by-God truth.”

  “Or see anyone, not a shadow of anyone?”

  “True again.”

  “No noises? Nothing?”

  “I heard a cow bawl. Or was it a calf?”

  “No need to smart off, Becker.”

  “No need to ask questions I’ve answered already.”

  “All right. What about enemies? Did Grimsley have bad trouble with anyone lately?”

  “No more’n usual.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “All ranchers got troubles, one way or another.”

  “Yesterday he told me someone was making off with his beef.”

  “Did he, now?”

  “He pointed toward Breedtown.”

  “He had a down on Indians in general.”

  “And he was losing cows?”

  “One now and then. Maybe two.”

  “Did you yourself suspect anyone, you yourself?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about Eagle Charlie?”

  “Him and Grimsley got along fair enough.”

  “You said you’d been working for Grimsley for ten years. Did you know him before?”

  “Never laid eyes on him. I was a long piece away, workin’ in west Texas and then around the Tonto Basin.”

  “Mogollon Rim country.”

  “Right. Different from here, but cows is cows.”

  “What is your opinion of Grimsley? Did you like him, dislike him, hate him?”

  “He paid pretty good, and he paid prompt.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “What else? Never speak bad of the dead. That’s what my old man taught me.”

  “This is a murder case, Becker. Don’t you want to find out who killed your boss?”

  “That’s your job.”

  Charleston sighed and rose from his chair. “You’ll stick around?”

  “Till somep’n shows up.”

  “Do that. I advise you to do that.”

  Becker walked to the door. I thought again he needed a horse under him.

  Charleston sat down as the door closed. “I guess you’d better take a tour around town, Jase. Better show we’re playing town marshal.”

  “All right, but there
’s some things—” I began, thinking to tell him about being at the Bar Star and what happened there.

  “Not now. They can wait.”

  I was letting myself out when he said, “Jase, Becker knows more than he tells. We’ll have to work on him.”

  Chapter Four

  I arrived early next morning before Charleston himself had appeared. Jimmy Conner was at his outside desk, though. You could count on him for everything except physical exercise. The office being shy on staff, he had installed a cot at one side of the room. He slept there, he told me, while Amussen was on vacation.

  Chatting with him, I thought it didn’t matter much to him where he bedded down. His wife was a practical nurse and often away from home, a fact that seemed to make for good marital relations.

  “All you need,” I said, “is a cookstove and a cupboard of groceries. Then you’d never have to move out.”

  “Kid,” he answered, “when you’ve quit drinking and lost your taste for women, what do you do? Gamble? Hell, I can’t afford it except for penny ante, and where’s the fun in a two-bit pot? What is left to a man is work, plain damn work.”

  I told him, “You could live on memories, Jimmy. Days of old.”

  He shook his head. “That’s pretty poor fodder, even if I was a kind of heller once.”

  As I was about to walk on, he said, “You won’t see much of the sheriff this morning. Two sales scheduled.”

  “I have a report to type up, anyhow,” I said.

  His thumb jerked toward the jail in back. “Maybe you can find time to bring back some grub. I got a customer.”

  He saw the question in my eyes and went on, “You wouldn’t know him. Some joker by the name of Curt Smith. I had to bring him in myself, after that new Safeway manager had cornered him with a leg of lamb under his coat.”

  “If he was that hungry,” I said, “he’ll want something to eat. I’ll fetch it at noon, Jimmy.”

  Conner thanked me as I made for the inner office. He had feet that didn’t like to take him even the two short blocks to the Commercial Cafe.

  I went to a typewriter, carrying the brief notes I had taken, and inserted a blank page. I had a good memory. Once Charleston had said it was phenomenal. I began typing.

  I had tapped out a page when Charleston came in, looking like the sheriff he was—frontier pants, jacket to match, white shirt with a tie, stockman’s hat. He said, “Money before murder, Jase. It’s sheriff-sale day. See you this afternoon.”

  I told him I’d have the report on yesterday ready.

  He nodded and said, “Good. And if you find time, play town marshal maybe once before I get back. The taxpayers like to see their money at work, even when it buys nothing.”

  He went out.

  I was all through at ten-thirty and left the office and got in the official town car, which was labeled CITY POLICE. This morning a marshal was about as much use as a stray dog. Mike Day lounged in front of his bank, his two English setters asleep on the sidewalk beside him. Mabel Main, who hung on as telephone operator when all but she had fled, came striding down the street, walking high-kneed. A half-block behind her came Luke McGluke, who kept looking behind him. He wasn’t in a hurry. He couldn’t help going fast, being so high in the thigh. I wondered what a cross between them would look like. Probably a skyhook.

  The road across the creek brought me in close sight of the revival tent. It was all pitched apparently. A couple of men were unloading folding chairs from a truck and carrying them in. The tent canvas was gray and a little tattered but covered a space big enough for a one-ring circus. A tall, gaunt man came out of an opening, looked at the sky and nodded his head as if in thanks for fair weather.

  The day had turned bright and hot for June. What rain had fallen yesterday had been sucked up, and dust rose behind my wheels even though they rolled slow.

  Just a little before noon I parked by the Commercial Cafe and went in for a sandwich and the plate I had promised to take back to the jail. Bodie Dunn was already eating, and so was Frank Featherston. Neither were close friends of mine, so I just waved and said, “Hi.” Jessie Lou was still slinging hash. I shook hands with her before I took a seat at the counter. She had grown into quite a girl, from bone and stringy muscle into full bloom.

  After she had brought my order, I asked, “Do you work night and day, Jessie Lou?”

  “Not always,” she answered, smiling. “Tonight I’m off at ten-thirty.” Her words seemed to carry a suggestion, a half-invitation. She followed them with “Will you be in again tonight?”

  “Maybe for a bite later on,” I told her, and she nodded as if pleased.

  A couple of customers entered and took stools, and she went to wait on them.

  At the office I gave the covered plate and cup of coffee to Jimmy Conner. He liked to wait on his guests himself, maybe because he was past getting into trouble on his own hook and liked to talk to those who could do it.

  Charleston came into the inner office right after I did. I handed him my typed report.

  “It can wait,” he said, laying it aside. “You had something of your own you wanted to tell me?”

  So I told him about being at the Bar Star, about Grimsley and Doc Yak and Red Fall and Junior Hogue and the two breeds I didn’t know.

  I said, “Yesterday, though, I got their names from Ted Frazier, after I left you.”

  He smiled. “Good for you, boy.”

  “One is Pete Pambrun,” I reported, “and the other Framboise. No first name.”

  Charleston took a slow breath, and his eyes studied the ceiling. “Good old names. A Pambrun was a respected factor in the old fur-trade days, and Framboise or LaFramboise—means raspberry in English—one hell of an expedition leader on the route from Oregon to California. Ask your dad.”

  Sometimes it seemed to me that Charleston knew everything—everything now but who killed Grimsley.

  I asked, “Have I told you anything important? Grimsley, kind of pretending not to, was giving those two breeds what-for.”

  Charleston’s gaze came back from the ceiling. “Who knows, Jase? I’m sort of interested in that Luke McGluke. Don’t ask me why. Maybe Red Fall, too. When Amussen comes back, I may want you to keep an eye on McGluke. Dave Becker’s my immediate meat. Now why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? I want you on duty tonight.”

  “Duty?” I said.

  Charleston gave me that good smile of his. “Town marshal again. Attend the revival meeting and save your soul.”

  When I didn’t answer, he explained, “Wherever people gather, there can be trouble. That’s the reason for special policemen at big events. Not that this event is so big that I expect trouble, but you better be there in case.”

  It doesn’t take much to draw a crowd in a small town. Anything a little out of the ordinary will attract people whose lives are ordinary. That’s what I thought as I parked the police car across the creek from the tent and saw through the trees that a congregation was gathering. The members were moving to the tent in fours and twos and singles, and the sounds of the voices I was able to hear didn’t seem like the sounds of true worshipers. The people were coming in cars across the big bridge and parking where they could and then stringing along toward the tent. No one came my way while I sat there.

  After watching and listening, I got out of the car, walked the path through the bushes, crossed the footbridge and went into the back of the tent, all along trying to be inconspicuous. The time was eight o’clock, and the long summer sunlight was heating the canvas as well as the crowd. I waited.

  A stage, draped in white, had been set at the front of the tent. An altar, I supposed it was called, stood on it. Beside and a little behind it were two chairs and a piano and stool. I couldn’t see a loudspeaker. It turned out none was necessary.

  After the last of the audience had dribbled in, making up a crowd of maybe a hundred and twenty-five people, the evangelist came in through a side door and mounted to the pulpit. After him came a pian
ist, who seated herself on the piano stool, a snare drummer with a couple of drums and a guitar player with a guitar. They seated themselves. The preacher raised his arms and in a voice like a bass fiddle in low register said, “Let us pray.”

  He prayed for quite a while, as if God needed long assurance and supplication, while the pianist prayed to the piano, the guitarist to his guitar and the snare drummer to his waiting sticks.

  Brother Sam called for music then, and the musicians played “Throw Out the Lifeline,” played it in a kind of waiting tempo, as if celebration waited on the sinner’s catching hold of the line.

  Brother Sam thanked them and went into his spiel, as my father might have called it.

  To hear Brother Sam tell it, we were all a bunch of miserable sinners, topers, adulterers, fornicators, unbelievers, name-in-vainers, gamblers, money changers. Our town was a nest of the ungodly.

  Listening to him with half an ear, I thought we weren’t so bad. We had our drunks, a couple of whom were in the tent, who repented every morning before the first drink. There was some sexual monkey business no doubt, but where wasn’t there? Men gambled and used the name of the Lord in vain, meaning no disrespect. But, bar the murder that hadn’t been solved, we were a pretty quiet and law-abiding community. I figured God could look on his handiwork without too much wrath, certainly not enough to consign us to the burning hell the preacher was talking about as if he’d seen it.

  Having put us in our place, Brother Sam called for more music. The players, as if warmed by the sight of hell, put some warmth into

  I am a stranger here,

  Within a foreign land.

  My home is far away,

  Upon a golden strand.

  Some of the hearers moved their feet to the beat.

  The sun was setting on this tentful of sinners. With slow hands Brother Sam lit a couple of candles on the altar. Light and shadow played on his face.

  Then he went into what my father had called the holy whine. His voice had a kind of chanting music in it. His mouth drew out the words it spoke. Come to Jesus, he was saying. Know the full love of God. Come to Jesus, all ye who are sore oppressed. Open your hearts to the heavenly light. Come to Jesus, who forgives the penitent. Repent, O sinners, repent. Be made new. And bless you, dear God. Bless these poor creatures who know not your love.