The Case of the Petrified Man (10 page)

I reached into my pocket to get out my notebook, in order to record this Important Revelation.

But before I could, I heard the door behind me open & a raspy voice said, “Make one move and it will be your last!”

I FROZE RIGHT THERE
with my Detective Notebook half out of my pocket. I could smell cigar smoke mixed with a flowery undertone.

“Who are you?” said the raspy voice behind me. “And what are you doing in my place?”

At first I had thought the raspy voice belonged to one of my mortal enemies: Dubois “Extra Dub” Donahue. But now it sounded like a woman’s. Only I had never heard of a cigar-smoking woman. I started to turn my head.

Something like a rifle barrel poked me hard between my shoulder blades. “I said don’t move!” said the voice. “What is your name and what are you doing here?”

I was now certain that the voice belonged to a woman.

But I did not relax. I had learned the hard way that women are just as dangerous as men in Virginia City.

I said, “My name is P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye. I am investigating the Murder of Miss Sally Sampson. I thought this was her crib.”

I felt the rifle barrel withdraw. “All right. Turn around.”

I turned to see a stout woman in brown and lavender. She was holding a broom in her hands. I had mistaken it for a rifle barrel. I felt mighty foolish.

“This ain’t Sally’s crib,” said the woman in her raspy voice. She had a small, thin cigar in her mouth. “It is mine. She rented it from me. And that still does not explain what you are doing here.”

“I am looking for clews,” I said. “I am a Detective. I have been hired to find the man who killed Miss Sally Sampson. I am hoping to compile a list of Suspects.”

The woman gave a kind of snort. She was about as wide as she was tall. Her tightly done-up dark hair was streaked with gray. Her lips and cheeks were stained with rouge. She sported a top hat of the sort ladies wear while riding: brown with a lavender scarf around it.

“Why, you is just a puppy,” she rasped, taking the little cigar from her mouth and blowing the smoke forcefully in my direction. “Half Injun, too, by the looks of you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said politely. “I am half Lakota, but one hundred percent Methodist.”

She snorted again & shook her head. “Short Sally’s things are all up at Currie’s, waiting to be auctioned day after
tomorrow. You will not find any clews around here.” She took another deep drag. “Who hired you, anyway?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but then hesitated. I guessed Martha might be a runaway slave, even though she called herself a lady’s maid. “Someone whose life is in danger,” I replied.

“All our lives are in danger,” said the woman. “There is a man in this town murdering helpless women & the Law is doing nothing about it. I suppose I should be glad someone is looking into this, even if it is just a child.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “a child can go where other people can’t.”

“True,” she said. “Very true.” She smiled & put the little cigar in her mouth & stepped forward & held out her hand. “My name is Gertrude Holmes, but everybody calls me Big Gussie. I own the Boarding House next door.” She was breathing heavily but I learned later that was just her way. I decided she was more wheezy than raspy. “What did you say your name was again?” she said.

“P.K. Pinkerton,” I replied. “Everybody calls me P.K.”

I do not like people touching me but I stretched out my hand politely. She nearly crushed it with her gloved hand.

“Well, P.K.,” she said in her wheezy voice, “I could use a stiff drink. How about you?”

“I am partial to black coffee,” I said, shaking the blood back into my hand. “I also like soda water with sarsaparilla syrup. It purifies the blood.”

She said. “I find whiskey purifies my blood just fine.” She dropped the butt of her slender cigar & shmooshed it out with the toe of her boot.

I bent over and picked up the stub end of the small cigar.

“What is this?” I asked. “I have never seen one like this.”

“That? That there’s a cigarrito. I buy mine by the dozen up at Bloomfield’s Tobacco Emporium.”

“What brand?” I said.

“It’s called ‘Lady Lilac,’” she said. “I love lilac.”

I sniffed the stub. Sure enough, the tobacco did have a tincture of lilac to it. I put it in my pocket.

Big Gussie was watching me with narrowed eyes & her head tilted to one side. “Why did you do that?”

“I am starting a Tobacco Collection,” I said. “A Big Tobacco Collection.”

She said, “You are a very peculiar person.”

I did not know what to say to that so I said nothing.

She looked at me and I looked at her.

“I reckon I can sweep up later,” she said. “Why don’t you come on over and take some refreshment with me and my girls? I have information that might be of use to you, including the names of about two dozen possible Suspects.”

I studied her posture. Her feet were pointed straight towards me and she did not show any signs of lying or deception.

I said, “Thank you, ma’am. Anything you could tell me about Suspects in this case would be mighty useful.”

NORTH D STREET HAS
lots of small whitewashed, pointy-roofed houses called
cribs
. Each has a door & window & a little porch with an overhang so the Ladies can sit outside in fine weather. Some of the cribs lean a little to the left or right.

Big Gussie called her place the “Brick House.” It was two stories tall & made of red brick & it stood smack dab in the middle of those cribs. It reminded me of a mother hen with all her little chicks lined up either side, some of them leaning over to be near her.

It was even nicer inside. She led me into a big,
bright parlor with a flowery Brussels Carpet & a high ceiling. On the facing wall was a big mirror that reflected back light & seemed to double the size of the room as well as the plump couches & dark wood furniture. There were four little polished tables with lace doilies & vases full of flowers & china ornaments & fancy ashtrays & cut-glass decanters.

There was a piano against one wall & a fiddle on top.

At a big, long table in the middle sat four women playing a Card Game & drinking coffee. It was past 3 p.m., but they were still in their undergarments.

“Girls,” said Big Gussie, “say howdy to P.K. Pinkerton, Virginia’s smallest detective.”

“Howdy, P.K.,” said the four girls. I touched my hat, then remembered myself and removed it.

“P.K. is investigating the death of poor Sal,” explained Big Gussie, as she placed two china teacups full of coffee on one end of the polished table. She gestured for me to sit. “Sally used to take her meals here,” added Gussie, “until we disagreed about runaways. She had no truck with them.”

“Runaways?” I said, thinking of Martha. “Do you mean runaway slaves?”

“Bless my stockings, no! I mean Leg Cases. Skedaddlers. Absquatulaters. Runaway Rebs.”

“Beg pardon?” I said, as mystified as ever.

Gussie rolled her eyes. “Deserters,” she said. “Especially Confederate deserters. We been getting quite a few of them recently. I reckon we’ll get more over the next few weeks on account of that terrible battle back east. Sally said we
should turn them cowards in. But I believe most of them just crave the company of soft and gentle women after all that blood and killing.”

Big Gussie did not look soft
or
gentle but I nodded for politeness.

“After our disagreement Sal stopped eating with us. Then she seceded from our profession, too.”

I got out my Detective Notebook and pencil. “Can you tell me the names and descriptions of her Gentlemen Callers?” I said. “For my list of Suspects?”

“Well,” said Gussie, taking a deep pull on her cigarrito, “as I just said, she hadn’t had none for a while. She was setting up to be a seamstress.”

“You mean she stopped having Gentlemen Callers?” said I.

“That is exactly what I mean,” said Gussie.

“But she used to have some?”

“Up till about a month ago.”

“I believe one of those Gentlemen Callers killed her,” I said. “Can you tell me any of their names?”

“Sure I can,” said Big Gussie. “You gals can help, right?”

One of the girls at the other end of the table said, “Sure. We knew most of ’em.”

Big Gussie introduced me to the four girls.

One girl was called Irish Rose. She had freckles and reddish-brown hair and an Irish accent. So her name was easy to remember.

Big Mouth Annie had a little rosebud mouth so that was easy to remember for her being the opposite of her name.

The one they called Spring Chicken did not look like a chicken but her corset was grass-green and she was young with fluffy yellow hair, so I thought of a baby chick in the springtime grass.

Honey Pie was plump & had honey-colored hair so I made a picture in my head of her eating pie filled with honey & remembered her that way.

They all gave me names & descriptions & as much other information as they could remember. I wrote them all down in my Detective Notebook.

At the end of our first session I had 23 Suspects, all men who were known to have visited Short Sally up till about a month ago.

23 Suspects! I had to narrow it down some.

Although Martha was short-sighted, she had been able to give me a basic description of the Killer: tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard. With the help of Big Gussie and her Girls, I crossed off the names of all the men who did not fit that description.

That left me with only eight names.

Then I asked if they knew whether any of the men had been out of town or busy elsewhere on the night when Short Sally was killed, viz: Friday September 26.

One man was known to have gone to Carson City for two days. Another had been in a drunken stupor all night in an upstairs room right there at the Boarding House. So we crossed off two more names.

That left me with a list of six likely suspects in the Murder of Short Sally.

1. Ludwig Hamm, barkeeper, German
   
2. Pierre Forote, barber, French
   
3. John Dennis, miner, American
   
4. Yuri Ivanovich, telegraph operator, Russian
   
5. Isaac E. Brokaw, policeman, American
   
6. Isaiah Coffin, photographer, English
   

I was surprised to hear Isaiah Coffin’s name come up as a Gentleman Caller of Sally’s, but I am pretty sure I did not show it. My face rarely betrays what I am feeling.

One of the other names sounded vaguely familiar.

I am good at remembering names if I see them written down, but not so good if I only hear them.

“John Dennis?” I said. “Where have I heard the name John Dennis?”

“He likes to put on airs,” said Big Gussie. “Sometimes calls himself El Dorado Johnny.”

Then I remembered. He was the yellow-haired, white-toothed, silver-spurred youth who wanted to be either Chief of the Comstock or a Good-Looking Corpse.

Big Gussie took a fresh Lady Lilac cigarrito out of a silver box. “Of course,” she said, “the man who killed Sally might have been a Gentleman Caller we did not know about. One not on the list.”

I nodded. “Would anyone else know anything?” I asked.

“Her best friend, Zoe, might,” said Gussie, blowing out smoke.

I remembered the Notice in the paper. The Administratrix of Sally’s estate had been named as Mrs. Zoe Brown.

“Mrs. Zoe Brown?” I asked. “The Administratrix of Sally’s estate?”

They all laughed. “You’re the only one who can get right through that word,” explained Gussie, tapping her ash. “None of us can get our tongue round it.”

“What does that long word mean, anyways?” asked the girl they called Spring Chicken. She was sucking her thumb.

“Means she got named in Sally’s will and will get proceeds from the sale,” said Gussie. She got up and went to a table & brought back the morning’s copy of the
Daily Territorial Enterprise.
It was folded open at the Notice of the Sale of Sally’s goods. The Girls looked at it, all except the thumb sucker.

I remembered that a few of the items on the list had puzzled me.