The Case of the Petrified Man (7 page)

I reckoned she would be safe there, as long as the bear did not return, but I had to find the Killer before she starved to death.

I turned to a new page in my Detective Notebook & chewed the stub of my pencil & tried to recall how Mr. Bucket and other literary detectives solved murders.

The first thing they usually did was go to the Scene of the Crime & look for Clews. After that they would Interview Witnesses & come up with a list of Suspects.

I wrote down

Go to Scene of Crime

Look for Clews

Interview Witnesses

Suspects

I knew Detectives also looked for Motive & Means. Motive is why the culprit committed the crime & Means is how they did it. If a Suspect is able to prove he was somewhere else when the crime occurred, that is called an Alibi.

I wrote down

Motive & Means

Alibi?

I looked at my list. The first letter of each step spelled GLISMA.

That would help me remember to Go to the scene of the crime & Look for clews & Interview witnesses & list the Suspects who had Motive & Means. Then I would find out which of those Suspects had Alibis and cross them off my list. When I had crossed off all the Suspects but one, I would have the Culprit.

It seemed fairly straightforward to me.

But something Martha had said was niggling at me. Before I went down to the Scene of the Crime, I thought I had better
interview one of the people who had first told me of Short Sally’s Murder, a gambler named Poker Face Jace.

Jace is probably the wisest man in Virginia City.

I thought I might find him at the Fashion Saloon on North B Street.

I was right.

THE FASHION SALOON IS
a One-Bit Bar with swinging wood-slat doors & bare plank tables & sawdust on the floor & a big window with a 100-mile view. It is bright & quiet & has a safe & cozy feel. I like it there, apart from the rank smell of tobacco-tinted saliva. But you get that smell nearly everywhere in this place.

On that day it did not smell too bad as fresh sawdust had recently been sprinkled over the floor.

Jason Francis Montgomery, a.k.a. Poker Face Jace, was sitting at his usual table with his back to the wall beside a window with a 100-mile view. He was
in the middle of a card game. I knew better than to disturb him, so I went up to the bar & stepped up on the brass foot rail to make myself a little taller.

Jace did not even look my way but I knew he had seen me.

He sees everything.

Jace is real clever. He is the one who taught me that while a man’s face and mouth may lie, his body always tells the truth.

At the end of the bar near the back of the saloon stood Jace’s friend & bodyguard, Stonewall. He is a big, ugly man with eyes that point in different directions. He packs a big Le Mat’s pistol & keeps an eye out for trouble. He is partial to sucking lemon wedges like his hero, Stonewall Jackson.

I turned to face the long mirror behind the bar.

It showed a boy with an expressionless face beneath a black slouch hat. The boy wore a faded red (not pink) flannel shirt & blue woolen coat with brass buttons. That boy was me & yet not me. I looked at the reflection of Jace in the mirror. I like watching people when they do not know I am watching them.

“Morning, P.K.,” said Mr. Leahigh, the barkeeper, in his low voice. He knew I was a friend of Jace’s. Mr. Leahigh is tall & thin with a head so narrow it makes me think of an axe. I like people with faces like that. I do not confuse them with other people.

I would have recognized his axe-head face even had he not been standing behind the bar with his apron and wiping cloth.

“Good morning, Lee,” I said politely. (That is what everyone calls him: Lee.)

“What’ll it be?” he said. “Whiskey? Tarantula Juice? Pink Gin?”

People here in Virginia like to josh you. But they often do it with nary a wink nor smile & sometimes it is hard to tell.

I was not sure if he was joshing me or not, so I replied politely, “It was my ma’s dying wish that I never kill nor gamble nor drink hard liquor. Have you got any ‘soft’ drinks?”

“I got soda water,” he said. “You can have it plain or with syrup.”

“What flavor syrup do you have?” I asked.

“Vanilla, ginger and sarsaparilla,” he said. “I recommend the sarsaparilla. It is good for purifying the blood in this thin air.”

“Give me a sarsaparilla soda then, please.”

He nodded & turned & got a four-sided blue-green bottle from the shelf below the mirror. It said Dr. Townsend’s Sarsaparilla on the side. He put a shot of syrup in the bottom of a glass mug & then topped up the mug with fizzing soda from a spigot. He left the blue-green bottle on the bar so I could see it was the Genuine Article, imported from faraway New York.

“That’ll be a short bit,” he said.

I put down a dime & sipped my sarsaparilla soda.

It was sweet & spicy & prickly all at the same time. It made my throat & stomach tingle in a nice way.

As I turned to watch Jace, a man in a brown bowler hat came to stand beside me. He ordered whiskey & then whistled a little tune under his breath. I did not pay attention to him because I was looking at Jace.

Jace was one of the main reasons I had decided to stay in Virginia City. When I realized he knew how to read people, I wanted his knowledge more than I had ever wanted anything. He agreed to teach me, in exchange for my help.

Jace was playing poker with three other men.

Unlike Mr. Leahigh, the men all looked pretty much the same to me. They all had mustaches & hats & wore dark clothes. In fact, they all looked a bit like Jace, who also has a mustache & hat & wears dark clothes. But there is something about Jace that makes him stand out from the crowd. He has a kind of stillness. All the other men were fidgeting or tapping their fingers or shuffling their feet. But he just sat there, his face in shadow because of the window behind him, occasionally taking a puff from his cigar.

Two of the other men were smoking cigars, too, and a cloud of blue smoke hung over their table. The fourth man was a tobacco chewer. I could tell by the lump in his left cheek.

Jace had taught me how to tell what a person is thinking by looking at their feet. I could tell that the tobacco chewer had a good hand. The toe of his right foot was pointing up. But the man opposite probably had a better hand. His feet were doing a little dance under the table.

I took a sip of my sarsaparilla soda, and set down my glass mug on the bar so that the handle pointed towards the man with the dancing feet.

Jace folded up his fanned-out cards. “I’m out,” he said.

“Me, too,” said the man across from him. They both put their cards facedown and sat back.

The tobacco chewer put a gold coin into a pile of coins. Then he turned his head and spat into a brass spittoon on the floor beside him.

“How is pecking for corn like chewing tobacco?” said the man in the brown bowler hat who was standing beside me. He had a pleasant Southern accent a little like Jace’s.

I turned and looked at him.

He was tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard!

I wondered if he was the Killer and if he had followed me here.

“It is a conundrum,” said the possible Killer of Short Sally. “A riddle with a pun for an answer. I repeat: How is pecking for corn like chewing tobacco?”

“I do not know,” said I. “How is pecking for corn like chewing tobacco?”

The man smiled & took out a pipe. “Because it is a foul habit.” He looked at me as if he was expecting a response. “Did you catch the pun?” he said. “‘Fowl’ with a
w
sounds just like ‘Foul’ with a
u.
A
fowl
habit. Chickens peck for corn and they are fowl.”

I nodded. I liked that. It was a bit like a mystery in one sentence.

“I like that,” I said. “It is a bit like a mystery in one sentence.”

“If you like it, then you are supposed to laugh,” said he.

“I never laugh,” I said. “Nor cry, neither.”

“Oh,” he said, and took a sip of whiskey.

He puffed his pipe, and the scent of it sent a strange pang to my heart. He was smoking the same brand of tobacco as my foster pa, who had been murdered the week before. My
throat felt tight & my vision got blurry. It must have been the smoke because I never cry.

I blinked and everything got clearer.

“Is that Green’s Irish Flake tobacco?” I asked him.

“Why, yes,” he drawled. “Would you like some?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “I do not smoke or chew. I believe them to be
foul
habits.”

He chuckled & puffed away.

“But I like the smell of that one,” I admitted. “My dead foster pa used to smoke it.”

He nodded. “It reminds me of home, too.” He put the briar pipe in his mouth and extended his hand. “Absalom Smith,” he said. “Actor and Professional Punster.”

“P.K. Pinkerton,” I replied, shaking his hand. “Private Eye.”

Ma Evangeline taught me a Trick to remembering people’s names and faces. She said to make a picture of that name and link it to something I can imagine in my head and then put the person in it. Absalom was a person from the Bible. He was King David’s favorite son, but his vanity betrayed him and he was caught in low-lying tree branches by his long hair and died. Absalom Smith had short hair as far as his bowler hat let me see, so I pictured him sitting on the branch from which King David’s favorite son dangled.

“Are you a Pinkerton Detective?” he repeated. “I did not realize they made them so small.”

“I am a Pinkerton, and a Detective,” I said, “but I am not employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency,
per se
. I am a Private Eye.”

“What does every detective, no matter how smart, overlook?” he said.

“I do not know.”

He removed his pipe. “His nose.” He paused to see if I would laugh.

I did not laugh & he said, “Are you working on a detective job now?”

“Yes,” I replied. “We call them ‘cases.’” Caution prevented me saying more.

At a table near Jace’s a man gave an almighty sneeze. He put some snuff in his nostril and sneezed again.

“What would contain all the snuff in the world?” said Mr. Absalom Smith, and as I was puzzling this out, he said, “No one knows.” He repeated this, tapping his nose & I realized he had said, “No one
NOSE
.”

I said, “That was another conundrum.”

“It was. And I believe
that
one almost made you smile.”

I was about to deny this when the jingly sound of spurs made me turn around real fast. That sound makes me jumpy because two of my mortal enemies wear spurs: Boz & Extra Dub.

But it was not Boz or Extra Dub.

It was only a smiling youth of about 17 or 18 years old with a dainty little slouch hat tipped over his left eye. I turned away in relief and then turned back.

He was tall & slim & blond with a billy goat beard!

Actually, he was of medium height. But perhaps to Martha he might seem tall. And his mustache & beard were almost
invisible, being mainly fluff. But under his small hat, his hair was the yellowest I had seen.

He was very dusty but you could tell he was good-looking underneath. He had about the whitest teeth I ever saw & the biggest silver spurs, too.

He also had two revolvers. The flaps of the holsters were undone & I could see the walnut grips of those guns.

He turned his brilliant smile towards the bar but as soon as he saw me his smile faded. He put on Expression No. 5 & took up a gunfighter’s stance. “You!” he said. “Draw!”

WHEN THE BLOND YOUTH
said
Draw!
all conversation in the saloon instantly ceased. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Leahigh slowly sink down behind the bar. Jace and the other poker players had stopped in mid-deal.

“Draw!” The youth tipped his head back so that his jaunty slouch hat did not block his vision. “I ain’t afraid of you.”

A pipe clattered to the floor, and I realized the dusty young man was not looking at me, but at the man standing beside me.

Mr. Absalom Smith did not rise to the bait nor
make the slightest move. Was he petrified with fear? Or cool as a radish?