Beast of the Field (19 page)

26.

Sterno left the hotel by the back door, squinting through the hard daylight for his Ford.  His plan was to go into those woods.  He’d had a feeling about those woods from the beginning, now the old man had mentioned them outright.  He didn’t know what was happening here, whose motives were at work and why, but there were now, possibly, three good men dead as a result—two oil company detectives and Tommy Donnan.  Sterno wasn’t sure if he himself was a good man or not, but he knew he didn’t want to be the next result.

As he was getting into his car he heard what sounded like an army of rats coming around the corner of the hotel.  When the girl saw him getting into his car she dumped her bike in the shade, marched to the passenger side door.  “I thought you’d try something sneaky like this,” she said.  “I was waiting around front for you.  What’ve you and that widow been doing down there in the basement for an hour?  And what-all happened to your pants?  Good Lord!”

“Not your concern.  Was that you I saw on the horse earlier, following me around?”  He sat in his car, closed the door.

“Not
your
concern.”

“Where’s the horse now?”

“I had to take her back, because of the shooting.  What was that shooting in the woods all about?”

“Not your concern.”

“Shit-blasted sneaks, every one of you.”

“Would you please step back from the car, girl, so I can get moving?”

“I told you not to call me ‘girl’ anymore.  And do you mind telling me just where in hell you think you’re running off to without your partner?  I ask you.”

*

Together, they puttered onto Main Street, going slow enough to hear each moment of combustion inside the car.  Beside him the girl read memos from his cardboard briefcase and made faces at the labels on his tins of food.  He’d go into the woods from the west, from the turn in the road, where he had found Tommy’s chain and wallet, go in on foot,
have the girl watch the car and the road.

Sterno saw the cluster of cars and hats in front of the German restaurant across from the
hotel, slowed the car down even more.  They were over two blocks away, but Sterno could clearly see the mayor and his wife, along with Jonas Neuwald; they stood among other well-dressed people.  They seemed to be making their way towards the restaurant.

"Who are those people with the mayor?"

"Um...the Whites, the Abernathys, Mr. and Mrs. Neuwald..."

"There having some kind of get-together, looks like."

"Looks like."

Sterno turned the car from Main, gassed it through a space between an office building and a grocery store, wheeled around the back corner and moved quickly to the back of the Old
Price Hotel.  When he had stopped, he reached across Millie's lap, clicked open her door.  "You know how to 'phone out to the mayor's house?"

She nodded through a look of confusion.

"Here's what you do.  At the desk in the lobby in there is a telephone.  Go to the lobby first, keep a careful eye on the mayor and his wife.  When their boy brings that Cadillac around, or if they begin to look like they are leaving, you get on that 'phone, get the girl to connect you out at the mayor's house, let it buzz one time, just one time, then you cut it right then.  You press down on that wishbone and keep it down.  Do you understand?"  He was holding his jaw with the entire flat of his hand by the time he had finished this piece.

"I aint stupid," she said. 

"One time, no more," Sterno repeated. 

"You're going to the
mayor's
house?"  He removed his arm from her grip, put his hand on her shoulder.  “Why the mayor’s house?”

"One time only, remember.  That's how I'll know to scram out of there, got me?"

She got out of the car, but held the door open too long.

"I have to be fast, partner."

Tess Helmcamp appeared at the screen door of the back entrance, wiping her hands.  He waved to her with a finger, then got out of the car.  He led Millie to the wooden steps by her wrist to hurry her.  Tess Helmcamp had smiled with long dimples when she first saw him, but this faded and the dimples became lines as Sterno hurried the girl to and up the back steps of the hotel.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“I’m going to leave Millie here with you for a few minutes.  Can you give her a piece of pie on me? ”

“Well, of course I can, but—what?—when are you—?”

Sterno was already in the car.  It choked, popped, lurched forward up the dirt of Elm Street.  Tess and Millie watched him drive away, getting smaller until they were gone in the dust.  He watched them get smaller and smaller, framed in his rearview mirror like a shaking photograph, until the dust had at last erased them.

No one followed him, no one passed him.  He pulled the car boldly up to the front steps of the mayor's porch.  There was no movement inside, or any other signs of life.  Chances were the doors were wide open.  He stepped around to the corner, saw horses grazing behind the house, nothing more.  He made a commotion on the porch with his hard soles, all the while keeping his eyes focused through the screens into the late afternoon shade of the house's interior. 
No one home.

The front door was unlocked.  Sterno hallooed into the quiet house, tried his best not to sound like Frankenstein’s monster through his swollen jaw.  He listened for thirty seconds and when he received no answer, he got to work.

*

Mrs. Helmcamp led her to the lobby.

“Can I sit by the window?” she asked.

“Sure, honey.  You want peach or apple?”

“Huh?  Oh, no pie, thank you.”

She brought her a piece of peach pie anyway, and a glass of milk, lingered there above her.  “Where is Mr. Sterno off to?” she asked.

Millie suddenly took the fork from the plate and shoved a huge biteful of pie into her mouth.  In way of response, she shrugged.

“He’s not off to do anything foolish or dangerous, is he?”

Millie chewed, shrugged, chewed.

“When is he coming back?”

“Good pie,” Millie said around the food.

Mrs. Helmcamp gave her a look that reminded Millie of one of Mother’s looks, a “what’re you up to?” look, before returning to the kitchen, leaving Millie in the quiet lobby.  Millie felt the way the Indian women looked at her.  They didn't speak to her; they looked at her.  She had to ignore them, though, she had to:  she was on the job. 

She swallowed down the pie, finished the milk in one swig, went right to the window, looked out just as the mayor kicked his head back and loosed one of his big haw-haws.  She watched in silence.  If one were to look in through the windows of the hotel and see those two eyes, he might think that despite all the guffaws and bright sunshine, all the humor had disappeared from the world.

The mayor?
 

Millie went through the letters in her mind, added to them what she knew of the events of last winter, and still she couldn’t figure him into it.  Some girl’s father doesn’t want her going around with an Irish boy—hell, that wasn’t a reason to kill someone was it? 

The
mayor?

There was a feeling in her stomach she had problems recognizing, or maybe she knew what it was—it was fear—but it was a different kind of fear she didn’t want to face.  First it was Junior.  Now it was the mayor.  This new, slow, thoughtful fear in her belly was all of the sudden regretting ever laying eyes on this detective from St. Louis.  She had known as soon as she saw Tommy under that buggy that it had been no accident; someone had killed him, she knew it.  Mother had been suspicious too, because she knew Tommy, knew Tommy wasn’t nearly the drinker they all made him out to be, knew Tommy could drive any size team of horse or mule to hell and back and never so much as let go of the reins…but knowing this had not meant she had wanted to find his killer.  Millie was beginning to understand now why Mother and Pa had fought her about writing the Pinkerton Agency.  Millie had never considered that by finding the killer, she might be putting someone from her hometown in jail, someone she cared about, maybe, or maybe even someone she loved. 

Her mind went back to that day of the storm.  To Junior.  Pa had sent Junior after a calf, a young bull he had bought to beef someday.  He had gone in the rain straight towards the distant woods, and come back after the storm empty handed.  No calf, but a wide, fanning scrape along the side of his face and neck where a tree branch had fallen on him.  “Didn’t find him, did you?  Well, hellfire,” Pa had said.  The way Junior had crashed down to the steps of the porch had stopped Millie’s thoughts even then.  She had been searching the distances east of the farm for a horse and buggy, but Junior’s panting and his bloodied face had taken her attention from Tommy.  Then he too seemed to be looking at something far away, far towards the woods.  Why?

She had to reel her thoughts in before they whirled out of control.  Now she didn't know whether to be angry or scared or what-all.  It’s best to not think at all, she thought.  You’re on the job and you just leave the thinking to Mr. Sterno.

The mayor was shaking hands with Mr. White.  He whistled for his new driver to bring the car.  He wasn’t going to inside.  He was going home.  Millie looked back at the telephone, but saw instead the hundred miles of lobby floor separating her from it.  She whipped her head back to the window as the mayor was helping Mrs. Greentree into the car.

Go make that telephone call!

Millie couldn't move.  The mayor got into his car with a grunt audible even in the hotel.  Behind her the telephone refused to get up off the counter and fly into her hands, the damned thing!  The mayor spoke to the driver and the car pulled away.  Millie was still frozen as the car slid past her, tossed blonde hair and a pair of blue eyes in the window, sitting there like a display in a shop.  The car left dust in the air, and by the time it had settled back to the ground there was nothing else to see. 

Still, Millie couldn't move.

             
                                                        *

In the center drawer of Greentree’s wide maplewood desk, under a felt pad, Sterno found a small, shining golden key.  It was the only item with any promise he had found thus far.  He held it in his hand, eyes moving about the office.  He stood, soft-stepped along, lifting frames and rugs, testing floorboards, but could find no home for the key.  He was getting nervous about time.  Then something about the wood paneling on one section of a wall caught his attention.  Even in the green shade of the mayor’s study, he could see it was newer wood.  A false wall.

Sterno felt along the moldings of the wood, up and down every vertical line, across every horizontal line.  He'd seen false walls before, in Memphis and in New Orleans.  He'd seen why people had them.  He tried the light fixtures last, and the first one he tried had some sideways give.  He pulled counterclockwise on it until stopped, but nothing happened.  He then pulled it toward him.  He heard a click as the wall released.  He used his fingertips to pull the wall open.  Before him was the darkness of a closet, any normal closet.  Some clothes hung from a rod and on the floor were some boxes.  A couple rifles stood at attention in a rack on one wall.  A sword in a silver scabbard leaned against the same wall, next to the guns.  Sterno lit a wooden match on the embossment of the scabbard, ran the flame up, then down the length of it.   

"7th Missouri Cavalry.  C.S.A.," he read aloud.  His daddy’s, maybe.  Or maybe a trophy.

In the light of the flame from the second match Sterno saw that the long white robes hanging in the closet were not just any Sunday clothes.  He lit a third match, ran it close to the white cloth until he found the same white-on-red cross from the campaign poster Mr. Price had shown him.  On the other breast was a similar cross, with the colors inverted. A hood was hanging over the left shoulder.  Next to his robes were smaller robes, most likely belonging to his wife. 
Looked like the old man
knew a thing or two about his mayor, after all.

The match burned to Sterno's finger.  He let it fall to the floor.  He got down on one knee, moved shoeboxes and liquor bottles around on the floor until he found the safe he knew would be there.  The key came from his pocket, slid like a knife through butter into the keyhole.  When the safe was opened, he lit another match.

There was cash, there were some legal papers, there were some photographs, there was a pistol, an ornate Derringer in a custom made wrist holster, and in the back of the safe, on a small shelf in the top corner of the safe, hard to get to, was a timepiece.  Sterno stepped back from the closet with the watch in his hand.  It was white silver, with a bare face and thin hands.  It had two and a half links of a small chain hanging from the metal loop under the Roman numeral VI.

"You come to crack nuts for my pie?"

Sterno wheeled around to see Velma Greentree standing in the doorway.  He had not forgotten about her when he came here, but had thought she was gone from the house.  The sleep lingering in her eye gave him the real story.  He should’ve checked the rooms.