Murder at Thumb Butte (24 page)

“
Why, for God’s sake?” Carl asked.

“
I want people to know that Maggie is my daughter, and a personal ad doesn’t seem like the correct way to do it. Second, we have a criminal to catch, and laying the Pinkerton National Detective Agency on the table might make the culprit nervous and cause him to make a mistake. Third, it’s a damn good story, and the editor will be beholden to me.”

“
You can’t tell him that the Winslow family hired us.”

“
No. A Mr. Steven Dancy of New York City hired us to chase Campbell.”

I had to smile. “Me?”

“
You were defrauded in New York and hired us to track down this scoundrel. Keeps the Winslows out and accounts for all of us being here.”

“
You’ll tell Castle, I hope. He already believes that I’m a violent, wronged man, out for revenge.”

“
Of course.” The closed-mouth smile told me he’d enjoy seeing me twist in the wind a bit.

I signaled the waitress over because I wasn’t leaving without a piece of Mrs. Potter’s lemon cake. After she left, I said, “Everyone has an assignment but me.”

“
I want you to see Castle. Tell him everything. I not only want him informed, I want to know what he sees in all of this. Any ideas or reservations. Then find out how he intends to defend Sharp.”

“
No difficulties with most of that, but I believe Castle keeps his courtroom strategy close to the vest.”

“
Then ask him what we can do to help. Hell, we’re the best detective agency in the world. If he relies solely on legal maneuvers, Sharp may end up stretching a rope.”

I nodded agreement but worried that Castle was more comfortable using legal maneuvers than catching bad men.

“
Do you want to meet up this evening?” Carl asked.

McAllen gave Carl Schmidt a flat look. “Six o’clock at the Palace. Now, if you’ll excuse us, I need to talk to Steve alone. Carl, I’ll meet you outside, and we can walk over to the newspaper office. Mary, you might as well go change into your riding clothes.”

The Schmidts stood and looked uncomfortable at being excluded from our conversation, but they left the café without protest.

I waited. I waited a long time because McAllen just sat there looking off into the distance. Suddenly, he grabbed his fork and took a bite of my cake. Maggie had ordered a piece of cake as well, but she had already finished hers.

“
Pretty good.” McAllen waved at a waitress until he got her attention, then pointed at my cake, and then himself. She nodded to let him know she understood the pantomime. McAllen remained silent until he was served and had taken two bites. Then he shoved the plate over to Maggie, who dug into the rest of the slice with relish.

“
Instead of making progress, we’re going backward,” he said.

“
What do you mean?”

“
He means we haven’t eliminated any of our suspects,” Maggie said. “In fact, we haven’t even elevated one or two as prime suspects.”

McAllen looked proud of his daughter’s pronouncements. “Correct, and now we have two more.”

“
Two more?” Maggie and I spoke almost together.

“
The Schmidts.”

“
Did I miss something?” I asked.

“
You did,” Maggie said, excited. “Carl doesn’t go anywhere or do anything without Mary. And he was too quick to volunteer to run down to Wickenburg. Especially since he isn’t an investigator. He’s half of a decoy team that lures in crooks.” She glanced at her father for confirmation. “He was scared what Pa would find there.”

Unbelievably, McAllen looked prouder. “Maggie has it exactly right. I’ve known those two for years. That was odd behavior for both of them. So odd that I don’t trust them to find the go-between. Later this afternoon, Maggie and I will see Virgil Earp. He’ll know the ne’er-do-wells in town.”

“
What could be the motive?” I asked.

“
Money,” Maggie shot back immediately. “Those two love money. But it would have to be a lot of money for them to go this far. Enough money for a lifetime of leisure.”

“
Yep,” McAllen said. “Those two have the highest expenses of any agents in the entire nation. I’m constantly trading telegrams with the Washington office to justify their expenses.”

The idea of big money was unsettling, because it might mean that they had taken possession of the stock certificate. I decided to go in another direction. “How was it odd behavior for Mary?” I asked.

“
Mary is the senior partner, both officially and by nature. She outranks Carl, and she jealously guards her position. She never raised an eyebrow when he volunteered to run off to a mining camp for three days.”

“
Wait. If they hired those men, that means they tried to have you killed.”

McAllen gave me another of his rare closed-mouth smiles. “That irritated me a bit, but I got riled when I remembered they also meant to kill you.”

I smiled back because I knew he was joking. “Thank you for the concern, but it may have been only you. I just happened to be standing next to you. At times, you can be a dangerous man to hang around.”

McAllen turned serious. “No. The Schmidts are careful … planners. If they had wanted only me, they would have waited until I was alone.” He gave me a long, flat look before asking, “Steve, why would Campbell’s murderer want you dead?”

_{Chapter 35}

The mood at the table was tense. McAllen stared at me, and his daughter mimicked his behavior. I stared back, because many things were going through my mind, and I didn’t like the conclusions I was drawing. The Schmidts were trying to expose a fraud by Campbell. Campbell had been notified that the New York City investigation had been dropped. He wanted to go home, but he was broke. He would have gone for the Schmidts’ bait. Did they somehow stumble upon the fact that he possessed a real stock certificate? The Schmidts had to be savvy about investments as part of their work, and they would have instantly known the value of shares in the company that owned Edison’s inventions.

But the Schmidts were Pinkertons. They liked the chase. They may have lived well on client money, but they weren’t looking for a life of leisure. They enjoyed the game far too much. Just like me, they had left the East for the adventure and novelty of the frontier. And if they had stolen the stock, why would they want McAllen or me dead? That made no sense. If a few months from now they showed up in New York City with the certificate, what could either of us do about it with no evidence of wrongdoing? Unless we found something damning, there was no way they could be extradited back to the territory. Could there be another reason they would fear McAllen going to Wickenburg? Something completely unrelated?

In the last few days, they had had many opportunities to kill me. Why wait and risk going after both McAllen and me at the same time? Then I felt a chill. I remembered the supposed highwayman on the night of my return from Virgil Earp’s.

I had never told McAllen about the Edison Electric Light Company. Why was I keeping this secret? I had told Castle. Then a thought struck me. The Schmidts had warned Castle not to involve Winslow in his defense case for Sharp. Could he have told them about the certificate? If he had, the Schmidts discovered that someone else knew about Campbell’s possession of the certificate. They might view me as a threat, as someone who could ascribe motive for them to kill Campbell. Then I shook off the thought, because if these men came from Wickenburg, the arrangements would have taken days.

I finally spoke. “Jeff and I came to Prescott to get a stock certificate from Elisha Campbell.” With that opening, I told the whole story. At first, McAllen looked intrigued and then increasingly angry.

“
Damn it, Steve, you’ve done this to me before. You don’t share your plans.” The voice was quiet, scary quiet.

“
This isn’t a plan. I don’t see a connection to Campbell’s murder. Listen, I didn’t want to start a gold rush. If word got out, people would tear this town apart looking for that piece of paper.”

“
No connection? You tell me this “piece of paper” could be extremely valuable, but you see no connection. You aren’t that dumb, Steve.” He waved his arm. “Now, you listen, these people don’t believe electricity can be harnessed. Hell, I’m not sure I do. Puttin’ lightnin’ down a mineshaft? Bullshit. Now, what’s the real reason you didn’t tell me?”

“
Because I wanted to find the certificate first. The papers at Castle’s office say that certificate has no value, but people unaware of all the facts may think it’s worth a lot of money. All I need to do is destroy it to avoid court challenges. I’ve been planning this for months. It’s business. I don’t believe it has anything to do with Campbell’s murder. On our first day, Jeff slugged and threatened Campbell, and then he was framed that very same night. Somebody already pissed as hell took advantage of an opportunity.”

McAllen stared at me for a long moment before saying, “Did it ever occur to you that the murderer got hold of that certificate and used Sharp as a way to get rid of Campbell? The killer didn’t know you knew about the damn thing. The Schmidts are experts at turning an incident like Sharp’s threat to their advantage. Even if it was a coincidence, it connects the stock certificate and the murder.”

“
Did it occur to you that those men were dumb as timber? We both have reputations of being good with a gun, yet they came at us like we were a couple of dry goods clerks. They approached when we were with Maggie and then warned us by telling her to step aside.”

“
What are you suggesting?”

“
Not to jump onto the Schmidts too fast. They’re smarter than that.”

“
They’re out of their element. They do things with finesse, not brutality.”

“
You make my point,” I replied.

McAllen snapped his coffee mug down with more force than necessary. “After you talk to Castle, find us at the newspaper office,” McAllen said. “I want to know what you learn. All of it.”

“
I presume you don’t want me to tell you in front of the editor.”

“
Steve, I’m not in the mood for your sarcasm.”

“
Yes, sir.” Before he could respond, I scurried out of the café.

Something didn’t feel right. If the Schmidts had the real stock certificate, how much could they gain by my being dead? They would still need to sue to challenge ownership of the shares. I didn’t see how my being alive or dead would affect their chances of prevailing in court. More important, what could they possibly gain by killing McAllen? Neither of us had the slightest evidence that pointed to the Schmidts, and at the moment, Sharp would likely be convicted for the murder. The only clue we had that the Schmidts might be involved was Carl’s volunteering to travel to Wickenburg. Weak. As I entered the building where Castle kept his office, I reminded myself that there was one other indicator of the Schmidts’ guilt—McAllen’s instincts. Betting against McAllen was never a good idea.

When Castle answered my knock, he didn’t look any more pleased to see me than he had on my previous visits. He immediately returned to one of his leather chairs and tossed aside some handwritten documents. I sat opposite him.

“
You confirmed your tendency for violence this morning.”

“
Four bad men tried to kill me and a Pinkerton officer. We defended ourselves.”

“
Very skillfully, I hear. I understand none of the four got off a single shot.”

“
My preferred outcome in a gunfight.”

Castle lit a cigar while striving to appear disinterested. “Why are you here?”

“
You do remember that I’m a friend of your client.”

“
I’ve suggested to him that he needs better friends.”

“
It must have disappointed you when he declined.”

For the next long moment, we sat in our opposing leather chairs, daring each other to blink. I won.

Castle said, “I repeat, why are you here?”

Without preamble, I took Castle through all of our investigations since I had last seen him, omitting mention of the Schmidts. By the time I finished, his cigar was half smoked, and his posture had become more relaxed. He seemed genuinely interested. At the end, I asked if he could add any insights to what we had found out.

“
Nothing initially comes to mind. That old barn has been abandoned for about two years. To my knowledge, only kids go there, especially at night. I think you’re on the wrong track, pursuing this horse idea. It’s not far enough to warrant saddling a horse. By the way, did you see Campbell standing up on his own two feet?”

“
Uh, yes. Before Sharp hit him. Why?”

“
Well, I can assure you, it would not be difficult for Mr. Sharp to send him down with a single punch. The man was skinny as a rail and probably only about five foot five or six. A strong man could have used that halter to manually pull the body away from the barn.”

“
That doesn’t bode well for Jeff.”

“
No, he’s a large man. So is Lew Davis. The rest of your suspects are of normal stature. Except for yourself, of course. You’re not thick like Mr. Sharp, but you’re tall and appear strong.”

“
Still on your list, am I?”

He laughed. “Not really. At least, not at the moment. You received a strong character reference from my client.”