Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) (18 page)

TULLY DROVE OUT U.S. ROUTE 95
to the Countryman Feed Store. The store was part of a strip mall. The parking lot to the mall was packed with the cars of weekend shoppers. The mall irritated Tully no end, because as a boy he had hunted grouse there when the land was occupied only by thick woods. He refused to shop in any of the mall’s stores, even though Dick’s Grocery offered the cheapest and best produce in town. He finally found a parking spot and walked over to Countryman’s, which was part hardware and part farm supply.

The cashier nearest the door he entered was a cute little brunette. Her name tag said “Bitsy.”

“Bitsy,” he said, “maybe you can help me out.”

“I’d love to, Sheriff,” she said, smiling. She had a dusting of freckles over her nose. Tully had a fondness for freckles. He could tell she was already in love with him, even though he couldn’t remember having seen her before.

“You must be new here,” he said.

“Three years,” she said.

“In Blight, that’s new. Anybody finds a job in this town, they hang on to it.”

She laughed. “That’s true.”

He checked her hands. No ring on her ring finger.

“I’m not married,” she said.

“I’m that obvious, am I?”

She laughed again. “I’m afraid so.”

“Now I’ve forgotten why I came in here,” he said. “Oh yes, I was wondering if you sell dog food here.”

“Dog food? Nope, we don’t. Just farm stuff, like for cattle and hogs and chickens.”

“Is the store manager in by any chance?”

“Yes he is. I’ll call him for you.” She picked up the phone by the cash register. “Mr. Starling, there’s a gentleman here to see you at Check Stand five.”

Tully stepped back to let a customer pay for his purchases. Presently, a bald man in a blue three-piece suit came hurrying up.

“Yes sir?”

“Hi, I’m Sheriff Bo Tully. I wonder if I could take a few minutes of your time, preferably in your office.”

The man’s eyes widened in surprise. “Certainly, Sheriff. This way, please. I hope it isn’t anything serious.”

“Probably not. Just something I have to check out. One of the many nuisances of crime fighting.”

Mr. Starling smiled slightly.

They went into a small, tidy office. The manager closed the door behind them. “Yes?”

“I have a criminal investigation under way at the West Branch Lodge,” Tully told him. “And as part of that investigation we learned that your store received three calls over a recent two-week period from the lodge. It strikes me as odd that anyone at the lodge would be calling a feed store.”

Starling looked puzzled. “I don’t recall any calls from the lodge in the past couple of weeks or at any other time for that matter. Three calls, you say?”

“Any of your employees know someone at the lodge, do you think?”

“I have no idea. But wait, I do recall one of our cashiers receiving several personal calls recently. We have a strict policy against that, and I had to speak to her about it.”

“Bitsy, by any chance?”

“Why, yes! How did you know?”

“A lucky guess. Look, Mr. Starling, I don’t want to get Bitsy into any trouble. I would in fact take it personally if she were to be fired or otherwise caused any problems because of this. Do you get my drift?”

Starling blinked. “Yes, I believe I do. Besides, she promised me it wouldn’t happen again. And it hasn’t.”

“I’m sure it hasn’t. Now, I will have to talk to Bitsy about those calls, but I can see that your store is very busy today. So I’ll talk to her after work. What time do you close?”

“Six o’clock sharp today.”

“Good. I’ll speak to her after work.”

Tully waited his turn at Check Stand 5 on his way out. He told Bitsy that he would need to talk to her when she got off.

“Good heavens, what about?” she said.

“Nothing too important,” he said. “I just need some information I think you might have.”

“Weird!” she said.

“Not too weird. I’ll see you out front at six. Do you have a car parked out there?”

“Yes, it’s that green Toyota sedan.” She pointed. “I’ll meet you there, if that’s okay.”

“Perfect.”

At five minutes after six, Tully was leaning against the Countryman’s Dumpster when Bitsy came scurrying out the back door. “Hi,” he said.

Bitsy sagged. “Hi,” she said, smiling faintly.

“I ran the plates on the green Toyota,” he said. “Not yours. I guess you know what we need to talk about.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

He took a card out of his pocket. “And now I have to read you your rights.”

LURCH WAS HUNCHED OVER HIS
computer by the time he got back to the office.

“Loafing again, were you?” Tully said.

“Sleeping, actually,” he said. “Every four or five days I seem to have need of sleep.”

“Good, I’m glad you got it out of your system, because I brought you three wineglasses that I want you to lift some prints from. How long do you think that will take?”

“Not long. I suppose you want me to see if I can get matches for them?”

“You must be psychic, Lurch. How long for that?”

“Maybe an hour. Is that quick enough?”

“I guess it will have to be. I’m going to grab some dinner, if I can find someone to eat with me.”

“She’s still in her office.”

“You are a psychic, Lurch.”

He called Susan. She seemed happy to hear from him.

“I’m thinking of a tent camping trip in February,” he said. “You interested?”

It was cruel, he thought, to make a person laugh that hard, first Pap and now Susan.

“If not a camping trip, then how about dinner at Crabbs tonight?”

“I’d love it!”

Crabbs was the classiest restaurant in Blight City. Each of its tables was covered in a fairly white tablecloth, and each had a candle sticking out of an empty wine bottle.

Tully held Susan’s chair for her to be seated, even though the gesture made him feel foolish. Not having to put up with such things was one of the advantages of being married. He hated dating, but what else was there? He was pretty sure that Susan had fallen in love with him. He knew that he had fallen in love with her, but he was careful not to let on. He thought it important not to overplay his hand, particularly after the disastrous camping trip the previous November

“As you can see, I got us our special table,” he said.

“I didn’t realize we had a special table.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“We’ve only had dinner here once before.”

“I know. That’s why this table is special.”

“My recollection is that we sat at the next table.”

Tully looked at that table. A young couple was seated there.

“Really? Well, from now on, this will be our special table.”

“Is there going to be a from-now-on?”

“That’s my plan.”

She smiled. “We’ll see.”

They both ordered prime rib end cuts. The servings were huge.

“I wonder what they did with the other half of the cow,” Tully said.

“Please!” she said. “I would just as soon not be reminded that my food once walked around enjoying its life.”

“Good point,” Tully said. “Do you mind talking a little shop while we eat?”

“Shop is my life. What do you want to know?”

“You still have Mike Wilson’s body on ice, of course.”

Susan took a bite of her prime rib, chewing it slowly, obviously savoring its juices. “In the cooler,” she said. “Of course.”

“You said in your report that his nose was broken. I assume that could mean that when he was sapped on the back of the head, he landed on his face.”

“That’s certainly a possibility, Bo. Even though the skin on his head wasn’t broken, he was hit awfully hard. I suspect the killer used something like a bag of lead shot, wrapped in several layers of buckskin. As you indicated earlier, the assailant probably didn’t intend for him to die before he was dumped in the river.” Susan took another bite of her prime rib.

“That’s one of my theories,” Tully said. “Now if he broke his nose when he landed on his face, he probably would have got a nosebleed, right?”

Susan continued chewing but nodded affirmatively.

“Because he was facedown in the river,” Tully went on, “all the blood would have been washed away, even from inside his nose.”

Susan cut another piece of prime rib. “Right.”

“So what I’m wondering is if there would be some way to photograph the inside of his nasal passage to determine if some of the blood vessels were ruptured. That would show that he had bled from the nose. Anyway, could I get a picture like that?”

Susan thought for a moment. “I don’t know why not. They get pictures of the inside of the colon with colonoscopy. I think if we got hold of a colonoscope, I might be able to get a close-up photo of ruptured blood vessels in the nose.”

The couple at the next table got up and moved.

“I didn’t mean to get into colons while we are eating,” Tully said.

“That’s what happens when you have dinner with a medical examiner.”

Tully wondered what it would be like at dinner if he were married to a medical examiner. He might have to give this more thought.

TULLY DROVE BACK TO WEST
Branch Lodge the following morning. The dogsled races were going full throttle, or whatever full that sled dogs go at. He found Pap at the bar, talking to DeWayne. “He’s a Scragg!” Pap said. “Did you know that?”

“Yeah,” Tully said. “He tried to tell me not all Scraggs are criminals.”

“Well, maybe most of them are,” DeWayne said. “A few of us aren’t.”

“You’re the first one I ever met who isn’t,” Pap said.

“And I’m not too sure about DeWayne,” Tully said. “I got a drink here the other night that was a crime.”

DeWayne laughed. “That wasn’t me that served it, though. I think maybe Wendy picked up a wrong bottle.”

Tully said, “DeWayne’s boss had this theory that by the second drink a person can’t tell good whiskey from bad. So it’s a waste of good whiskey to serve single-malt Scotch, say, after the first drink.”

“I do what I’m told,” DeWayne said.

“Do you know that my great-great-granddaddy hung your great-great-granddaddy way back in the eighteen hundreds?” Pap said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“And your great-great-granddaddy hadn’t even done any crimes yet. But Beauregard Tully figured a Scragg would get around to it sooner or later. So it was kind of a preemptive hanging!”

“That’s Pap’s favorite joke,” Tully said. “Nobody knows if a word of it is true.”

DeWayne laughed and poured another shot into Pap’s glass. “So how are you coming along on your criminal investigation, Bo?”

“Mighty slow, DeWayne, mighty slow. It’s all very complicated. “You’re still a suspect, though.”

“I figured that much.”

“I didn’t know DeWayne was a suspect,” Pap said.

“Yeah, he is. So I hope you haven’t been blabbing any of our investigative findings to him.”

“I didn’t know we had any investigative findings.”

“Actually, we don’t.”

“Good,” De Wayne said. “I probably can get away with it then.”

“Probably,” Tully said. “By the way, DeWayne, you can help me out a little in that regard.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Was Mike Wilson a gun nut? Or did he just have plenty of guns around, like a typical hunter?”

“If by ‘gun nut’ you mean did he love guns, the answer is yes. He collected some makes and models. I don’t know which ones. He was always talking about some gun or other that he had just acquired. I never paid much attention. Sorry I can’t be of more help. Even though it may cast more suspicion on me, I’ll tell you that I was none too fond of Mike. His murder didn’t cause me to lose a bit of sleep.”

“That doesn’t separate you from the pack,” Tully said. “I haven’t run into a person yet who cared much for Mike. How do you feel about Mrs. Wilson?”

The glass DeWayne was drying slipped out of his hands and smashed on the floor. He grabbed a broom and dustpan, swept the glass up, and dumped it in a garbage can. “I like her. She’s looks after me pretty good.”

“How good?” Tully asked.

“You mean are we having an affair of some kind? The answer is no, nothing like that. She’s fifteen, twenty years older than I am. She loaned me money, and I’m paying her back, a little at a time.”

“Bail money?” Tully said.

DeWayne was silent for a moment. “Yeah, bail money. I did a year for selling weed. But I’ve been clean ever since. I was a stupid kid. Blanche sent me to bartending classes and gave me a job. She pays me well. Probably about twice what Mike thought I got.”

Pap said, “They put people in jail for selling weed? I thought they just required payoffs.”

“Some of the feds are picky that way,” Tully said. “They even put people away for graft and corruption.”

“Now that’s carrying law enforcement way too far!” Pap said.

For lunch, Tully reluctantly settled on a tuna salad. Pap took the beef dip with fries. They both took shots of single-malt Scotch. Tully sipped his tentatively. Perfect. He looked over at the bar. DeWayne was smiling at him. He smiled back.

“So what’s this job you want me to do?” Pap said.

“Basically, I want you to watch my back.”

He laid out his plan.

“Seems a bit risky,” Pap said.

“You have a problem with that?”

“Not a bit.”

Tom and Janice Duffy came over to their table and sat down. The waitress took their orders, Tom, the crispy chicken sandwich, and Janice, the wild mushroom strudel. They both ordered margaritas.

“Sorry to hear your aunt Margaret died,” Tully told Tom.

Tom gave him a quick, hard look. “Yes. She was very old. Always sad, though, when you lose a family member.”

“Yes, it is,” Tully said. “I remember the last time I saw Aunt Margaret. We were in college then.” He estimated Aunt Margaret would now be about 110.

“I never even knew he had an aunt Margaret,” Janice said.

“Enough about Aunt Margaret,” Tom said. “I understand from Janice that you are in hot pursuit of a murderer.”

“There is pursuit but I’m not sure how hot it is. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to Janice. I need a favor from her.”

“A favor?” Tom said.

“Yes, I need yet another trip up the mountain.”

“My pleasure,” Janice said, not helping Tully one bit. “How’s the race going, Janice?”

“Fine, I had a great qualifying run this morning, the best time yet. I don’t race again until Wednesday.”

“Great! “Tully said. “Because tomorrow morning I would very much like you to haul Pap up the mountain. He’s a lecherous old devil, but I think you can handle him.”

“I like lecherous,” she said, giving Tully a look.

Tom laughed. “She surely does.”

Tully forced a laugh.

Tom said, “Mind if I ask what’s going on?”

Tully glanced around to make sure none of the other diners was within hearing range. He laid out the plan for them.

Pap said, “It used to be a whole lot simpler in the olden days.”

“Sure,” Tully said. “If you don’t mind arresting innocent people.”

“I figure everybody is guilty of something.”