Come the Spring (8 page)

“You're positive it was cleaned Tuesday night?”

Ryan stopped what he was doing and walked back to the lobby. He spotted the wad of blue fabric in Cole's hand.

“Yeah, I'm sure. Why? What have you got?”

“A possibility.”

“A possibility of what?”

Cole smiled. “A witness.”

Seven
 

Three women had been inside the bank between the hours of one and three o'clock in the afternoon on the day of the robbery. Cole and Ryan knew that was fact, not speculation, because of Sherman MacCorkle's taskmaster rules. Just as the sheriff had told Ryan, the president of the bank had demanded that every transaction—even change for a dollar bill—be recorded by name on a piece of paper and filed in the cash drawer. If the figures on the papers didn't balance with the money in the drawer, the teller had to make up the difference. MacCorkle had also insisted that each day's tallies be separated into the morning and afternoon hours. The receipts for Wednesday morning's transactions were still on MacCorkle's desk in three neat piles. There was also an open filing cabinet behind MacCorkle's desk filled with documents, loan applications, mortgages, and records of foreclosures. Every piece had a date on top.

God love Sherman MacCorkle for being such a stickler for details.

With all the interruptions, it took until evening to sort out all the names. In all, twenty-nine men and women had come into the bank that day. Eighteen had taken care of their business during the morning hours, and none of them were women. The bank had been closed for lunch from noon until one o'clock, and that afternoon, eleven people had come inside, and of those eleven, three were women.

One of them had left her bag behind.

Ryan and Cole were cautious about the discovery and decided in hushed, urgent voices to keep the possibility of a witness to themselves for the time being.

“We could be jumping the gun on this,” Cole warned. “In fact, we probably are.”

“Yeah, but I got a feeling…”

“Me too,” Cole whispered. “The thing is … it could have been under the desk for weeks.”

“We should talk to the couple who cleans the place right away. I've got their names and address somewhere in my notes,” Ryan said as he flipped through the pages of his notepad. “Here it is. Mildred and Edward Stewart. They live over on Currant Street. Let's go talk to them now. I want to get out of here for a few minutes and get some fresh air.”

“It's past nine,” Cole said. “They might be in bed.”

He was already moving toward the front door as he reminded Ryan of the time. They locked the door on their way out and walked over to the Stewarts' cottage on the outskirts of town. The couple's daughter opened the door for them and explained that her parents were working. They cleaned the bank, the church, and the general store every night.

The marshals backtracked. They could see the lights inside the general store. The shades were drawn, but Edward Stewart opened the door as soon as Ryan knocked and told him who he was.

Mildred was down on her knees scrubbing the floor. The heavyset woman got to her feet and wiped her hands on her apron when the marshals came inside. Both she and her husband were older—around fifty or so, Cole speculated—and from their haggard expressions and their stooped shoulders, he knew they had had to work hard all of their lives.

Ryan made the introductions, and then said, “We know you're busy, but we sure would appreciate it if you would answer a couple of questions.”

“We'll be glad to help any way we can,” Edward said. “There's some chairs behind the counter if you want to sit down. The floor should be dry by now.”

“It won't take that long,” Ryan said. “Did you and Mildred clean the bank Tuesday night?”

Edward nodded. “Yes, sir, we did. We clean it every night but Sunday, and MacCorkle paid us every Monday morning.”

“Do you think the new people running the place will keep us on?” Mildred asked. “We do a good job and we don't charge much.”

They could tell she was worried. She was wringing her apron in her hands and frowning with concern.

“I'm sure they'll keep you on,” Ryan predicted. “When you clean the bank, do you wash the floors or sweep them?”

“I do both,” Mildred answered. “First I give them a good sweeping, and then I get down on my hands and knees and wash every inch of my floors. I use vinegar and water, and when I'm done, the hardwood shines, doesn't it, Edward?”

“Yes, it does,” he agreed.

“You don't move the furniture, do you?” Cole asked.

“I don't move the heavy pieces, but I move the chairs and the trash tins. I get under the tellers' windows, under the desks, and behind the file cabinets
that aren't against the walls. We do a real thorough job,” she insisted.

“MacCorkle always inspected our work. Sometimes he'd get down on his knees and look into the corners just to make sure we didn't miss a speck of dust or a cobweb, and if he found any, he deducted from our pay. He was real finicky about his bank.”

“He bought old, used-up furniture for the lobby and his loan officers, but he told us, with enough elbow grease, we could make the wood shine again. Some of those desks should have been thrown away years ago, but MacCorkle wasn't one to waste anything,” Edward said.

“He had fancy new furniture put in his office,” Mildred interjected.

Cole spotted a basket of green apples on the counter. He took a coin out of his pocket, tossed it on the counter, and then selected two. He threw one to Ryan and took a bite out of the other.

“Ma'am, did the folks who came into the bank ever leave anything behind?”

“Sure they did,” Mildred answered. “I found a pretty brooch once, and Edward found a wallet with six whole dollars inside. Anything that's left behind is put in the lost-and-found box in MacCorkle's office. It's in the corner by the safe.”

“Did you happen to find anything Tuesday night?”

Both Mildred and Edward shook their heads.

“Do you remember cleaning under the desks Tuesday?” Cole asked.

“Sure I remember,” Mildred said. “I clean under the desks every night, but Sunday. Why are you asking?”

“I was just curious,” Cole lied.

“Even if we were tired, we cleaned every inch of the bank because MacCorkle wouldn't pay us our full wage if we didn't.”

“He was a hard man to work for,” Mildred whispered.

“You shouldn't be speaking ill of the dead,” Ed-ward told his wife.

“I'm speaking the truth,” she argued.

“We'll let you get back to your job,” Ryan said. “Thanks for your help.”

Edward moved forward to let them out the front door. “Do you think you could get MacCorkle's wife to pay us for the two nights we cleaned?”

“I'll be happy to talk to her, but if she doesn't pay you, I'll make sure the new manager does.”

Edward shook his head. “If we can be of any help catching those men who killed our friends, you let us know, Marshal.”

“I'll do that,” Ryan promised.

The marshals started down the boardwalk. “Now what do we do?” Cole asked.

“Go back to the bank and box up all the papers from yesterday's business. It won't take long.”

“Do you think the restaurant's still open?”

“No, it's too late. Your apple's going to have to do for the moment. I wish we could go talk to those three women now, but I don't know where they live.”

“We can get the addresses from the sheriff as soon as he gets back with his posse.”

“Yes,” Ryan agreed.

They walked along in silence for several minutes, and then Cole said, “At least we know the bag was left during the day of the robbery. MacCorkle was a real sweetheart, wasn't he?”

“You mean holding back their wages if they didn't do a thorough job?”

“Exactly,” Cole said. “Why would a woman leave her purse behind?”

“She must have been in a panic.”

“If she was hiding in the kneehole, she saw the whole thing.”

“Maybe
she saw the whole thing,” Ryan said. “We should talk to the man who sits at the desk.”

He handed Cole the key to the front door of the bank while he dug his notepad out again. After Cole had gone inside and turned up the gas lamp, Ryan found what he was looking for.

“His name's Lemont Morganstaff. We'll talk to him in the morning,” he said. “He might know something about the bag.”

“What's he gonna know?” Cole asked.

Ryan shrugged. “Probably nothing, but we have to ask him anyway.”

“And then what?”

“If he doesn't know where the bag came from, we still can't assume a woman was hiding in the kneehole. It could have ended up there a hundred different ways. One of the three women could have sat down at the desk to go through some papers. She might have dropped it when she got up. Damn, I wish it wasn't so late.”

“You're right. There could be a hundred different explanations. A woman could have left it during the morning. She could have come inside with a friend and been sitting at the desk while he did his banking.”

“Why would a woman carry around an empty purse?”

“I don't know why they carry them in the first place. Pockets are more efficient.”

“We shouldn't get our hopes up. A woman might have dropped it, then kicked it into the corner of the kneehole when she stood up. Does that make sense to you?”

Cole shook his head. “The women I know keep track of their things.”

“God, I hope she saw it.”

“Now who's being ruthless? If she did see the murders, she has to be scared out of her mind. The last thing she's going to want to do is come forward.”

“We'll protect her.”

“She won't believe that, not if she heard what happened to Luke MacFarland.”

Ryan began to pace around the lobby. In the shadows of the gas lamps, the bloodstains resembled ghoulish outlines.

“We're going to try to follow procedure on this one. I don't want to leave any stone unturned.”

Exasperated, Cole said, “I've been a marshal one day. I don't know what the procedures are.”

“We interview the three women first, but we also question every man who came in here yesterday.”

“It seems like a waste of time to me,” Cole said.

“It's procedure.”

Cole leaned back against a desk and took another bite of his apple. “Fine, we'll do it your way. There were twenty-nine people inside the bank. You talk to fifteen and I'll take the other fourteen.”

“No, that isn't how it works. We interview them together, then compare notes afterwards. I might miss something that you will pick up,” he explained. “We'll talk to the women first,” he repeated. “Then the others. And that's only the beginning. We need to talk to everyone who happened to be on the street, near the street, or in one of the buildings close to the bank. We also—”

Cole interrupted him. “In other words, we talk to everyone.”

“Just about,” Ryan replied. “As much as I hate to, we're going to have to involve Sloan on this. I don't know these people. He does, and people here might tell him things they won't tell us. I'll give him the list of names as soon as he gets back.”

Ryan stopped pacing and looked around the lobby. “I think we're finished here. I'll put yesterday's papers in the safe just in case one of us wants to go through them again. The bookkeepers from the bank in Gram-by will be here Sunday to examine MacCorkle's
records, and when they're finished, we'll know the exact amount stolen. Let's meet back here at seven in the morning and have Sloan round up the people we want to talk to.”

“I don't think it's a good idea to question them here. We should use the office at the jail.”

Ryan shook his head. “Jails make people nervous.”

“Seeing the bloodstains is going to make them more nervous.”

“Yeah, you're right. We'll use the jail.”

After collecting the papers and locking the safe, they left the bank.

“Have you checked into the hotel yet?” Ryan asked. “No, I went directly to the bank. What about you?”

“I didn't take the time either. Are you still hungry?”

“Yeah, I am,” Cole answered. “Maybe the hotel will open the kitchen for us.”

“They will,” Ryan assured him. “We're marshals. We'll make them.”

Cole laughed. “I knew there had to be a couple of benefits to this job.”

They walked in companionable silence down the middle of the street, the only light supplied by a full moon.

“How much money do you think they got away with?” Cole asked.

“Like I said before, we won't know the exact amount until the examiners go through the records. I do know from the receipt I found on MacCorkle's desk that an army paymaster made a deposit that morning. The amount was seventeen thousand eight hundred and some change.”