The Luck Runs Out (7 page)

“Forgery Point?”

The officer scratched his head. “That’s a new one on me. Where the heck is it, do you know?”

“Vaguely. It’s somewhere beyond the Seven Forks. I can’t recall offhand which fork one takes, but I think I’d know once I got that far.”

“Come on, then.”

They got into one of the waiting cruisers and started twisting their way over, the narrow back roads. Though the distance was not great, it took them over twenty minutes to get to Seven Forks as the snake crawls, and another twenty to navigate the ruts and potholes as far as Forgery Point.

The place was as desolate as Shandy had remembered it, but it did have a general store of sorts. Rightly surmising that this must also be the post office, the two men went in and asked the blowsy woman in charge where Flackley the Farrier lived. She eyed them with avid curiosity.

“What are you arrestin’ her for?”

“Nothing,” said the lieutenant with admirable restraint. “We just want to talk with some member of her family.”

“She ain’t got none.”

“We understood the Flackleys were a large family,” said Shandy in his most sternly professorial tone.

“They’re all gone.”

“Then we’d like to see where she lives. Could you tell us, please?”

After a good deal of fishing to find out what they were there for, the woman gave up and grudgingly imparted directions in as confusing a manner as possible. Since there was really only one road, however, they managed to locate what must be Miss Flackey’s home.

The place looked as immaculate as the woman herself had been. Though the house must be edging toward the two-hundred mark, its weathered shingles were all in place, its ridgepole straight as an arrow, its chimney bricks well pointed. There were neat little brick-edged plots that no doubt would have been planted with Patient Lucy and other old-fashioned annuals if Miss Flackley had lived till the ground warmed up.

“It’s a damned shame,” said Corbin.

Shandy nodded. “Yes, she was a good woman. Do I see someone—”

The door opened. A man’s voice called out, “That you, Aunt Martha?”

So the farrier had not been alone in the world, after all. The man who appeared in the doorway looked exactly like the sort of nephew one would expect Miss Flackley to have, not large in the frame but well muscled and wiry. His hair was dark, wavy, and plentiful, his eyebrows thick, his mustache enormous and dashingly twisted at the ends, his beard short but bushy. What little they could see of his face wasn’t bad-looking. Probably in his late thirties, Shandy thought. He had on clean brown corduroys and a clean plaid flannel shirt such as his aunt herself might have worn. Shandy didn’t recall her having mentioned a nephew at dinner, but neither had she alluded to any other details of her personal life.

The man didn’t seem at all disconcerted to see two strangers in a police cruiser. He merely remarked, “Oh, sorry, I was expecting my aunt back. If you’re looking for her, I’m afraid she ain’t around right now. She went to visit some friends last night and she never came in. I guess she must of slept over. Anything I can do for you?”

“You’re her nephew, eh?” said the lieutenant. “Live here right along?”

“No, I’ve only been here a couple of days. I was passing through the area and thought I’d stop and see what the old homestead looked like. My grandfather used to talk about Forgery Point a lot. I think he’d of been as well pleased to stay on, but it never came to be his turn.”

“His turn for what?”

“Well, see, the way it’s always been, when anything happens to Flackley the Farrier, whoever’s handiest steps in and takes over. If there’s more than one son, for instance, the oldest one gets the job and the rest light out for themselves. That’s what my grandfather did. Aunt Martha’s father was Flackley the Farrier for quite a while, then he took sick and died all of a sudden during World War II while the rest of ’em was off in the army, so Aunt Martha quit schoolteaching and took over.”

“Who taught her the craft?” asked Shandy.

“Shucks, no Flackley ever has to be taught how to shoe a horse or ram a pill down one’s throat, for that matter. It’s born in the blood. You might think farriery was kind of heavy work for a woman her size, but it don’t seem to faze her none.”

“Why didn’t one of the men take over from her when they came back from the war?”

“Wasn’t many came back,” said the nephew. “Anyway, once you start you mostly keep on. That’s the way it’s always been. Say, I don’t mean to be nosy, but who are you folks? I hope there ain’t anything the matter.”

“I’m afraid there is,” said the lieutenant “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Flackley,” the man replied in some surprise. “Frank Flackley. What’s wrong? She been in an accident or something? Is she hurt bad?”

“I’m sorry to tell you that she’s dead.”

“Dead?”

Frank Flackley looked at them for what seemed like a long time. Then he drew a long breath.

“Looks like it’s up to me, then. Is the van busted up much?”

“It wasn’t an automobile accident, Mr. Flackley. Your aunt was the victim of a murderous assault, and the van appears to have been stolen.”

“Oh, my God! Who done it?”

“We have no idea, I’m sorry to say.”

Corbin filled in what few details he could give. Flackley kept shaking his head in obvious dismay.

“Now what the hell am I supposed to do? Aunt Martha told me we’ve never disappointed a customer, not once in a hundred and eighty-two years. I hate like hell to let the family down at a time like this, but I don’t know where I’m s’posed to be at. The schedule’s in the van.”

He appeared more disturbed about the business than about his aunt. Perhaps to a Flackley, that was a natural reaction.

“Brace up,” said Shandy. “The entire student body of Balaclava Agricultural College is out combing the hillsides right now. They may already have spotted your van. Mind if we use the telephone to check back with the college?”

“Isn’t one. Aunt Martha said they never brought the lines out here.”

“Good heavens! That’s rather unusual, isn’t it? You really are isolated, aren’t you?”

“Looks like I’m gonna be,” said Flackley with a grim attempt at a smile. “Don’t know but what I might see about having one run in, myself. I’m used to having things a little livelier than this.”

“But didn’t your aunt have any friends she’d want to call up? What about business appointments?”

“Friends, I dunno. Business she wouldn’t need a telephone for. The work was planned out on a regular schedule, see, and the schedule was posted up in the van in case some other Flackley had to take over without notice, like now.” He shook his head as if denying the fact.

“You said you were just passing through,” said Lieutenant Corbin. “Mind telling us where you came from?”

“Everywheres, just about. I was travelin’ with a rodeo, see, out through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, you name it. Wasn’t a big outfit. You never heard of Rudy’s Rough Riders, I don’t suppose?”

“You were a cowboy?”

“No.” Again that incredulous stare. “I was the farrier, naturally. Shod the horses, doctored the animals when they got hurt, doctored the riders, too, more often than not. Ol’ Doc Flackley, they used to call me, that and a few other things. Anyway, Rudy managed to hook himself a rich rancher’s widow down a ways out from Santa Fe, so he busted up the outfit. Well, that left me without a job, but I had a few bucks in my pocket and I’d always sort of had a hankering to see where my folks come from, so here I am. Sort of like what they’d call the workings of fate, ain’t it?”

Shandy thought of something else it might be called. An out-of-work rodeo hand could conceivably not be all that averse to taking over a prosperous family business. He could tell the same notion was running through Corbin’s mind when the lieutenant asked, “Where’s your car, Flackley?”

“Never needed none, traveling with the rodeo. I was aiming to get me some wheels when I got settled somewheres.”

“How did you get here?”

“Wrote Aunt Martha I was headin’ this way and what bus I’d be on. I figured if she wanted to meet me, she could. If not, I’d just keep ridin’. When I got to the big shopping center down there a ways, I seen the van with Flackley the Farrier on it hauled up right smack beside the bus stop, so I got off. Aunt Martha seemed real pleased to see me. Guess it’s been kind of lonesome for her since the old man died. She wanted me to stay on awhile, so I said I would.”

“When did this happen?”

“Day before yesterday, about three o’clock, I guess.”

“Yet she went out to dinner last night, leaving her long-lost nephew here alone,” said Shandy.

“I told her to go ahead, I didn’t mind. After spendin’ most of the week on a Greyhound bus, I was just as well pleased to stretch out in front of the TV with a couple o’, beers.”

“Then she did have electricity in the house.”

“Sure. She run her own dynamo out back. Guess I’d better poke around and see if I can figure out how it works.”

“Mr. Flackley,” Shandy persisted, “aren’t you rather taking things for granted? What makes you so sure you’ll be the one to inherit the—er—aegis of office?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m here,” said the farrier. “For another, I don’t know’s there’s anybody else left. According to what Aunt Martha said, the Flackleys have sort of petered out. I can’t say I’m exactly kickin’ up my heels at the idea of spendin’ the rest of my life out here with the chipmunks, but at a time like this it just don’t seem decent to leave.”

“You couldn’t be more right about that, Mr. Flackley,” Lieutenant Corbin assured him. “You’d be extremely unwise to try to leave the area before we’ve found out who murdered your aunt. We’ll get back to you as soon as we have any news.”

“Say, can’t I come along with you folks and help hunt for the van? That way I might get on with my work a little faster.”

“I wouldn’t count on being able to use your van for a while after it’s found, Mr. Flackley,” said Corbin. “We may have to hold it for evidence.”

“What kind of evidence? Aunt Martha wasn’t killed in it, was she?”

“We don’t know. Her body was found stuffed into a feeding apparatus in a barn where one of the college pigs was kept. Whether she was killed there or elsewhere hasn’t yet been determined. To further complicate the situation, the pig is missing, too, and we’re theorizing that the van was stolen to take the pig away.”

“What the hell for?”

“Belinda of Balaclava is a very valuable animal,” said Shandy.

“Yes, but, jeez! Using the family van to steal a pig. That—that’s awful! You think maybe Aunt Martha was trying to stop whoever stole the pig and that’s how she got killed?”

“That’s as reasonable a supposition as any,” said Corbin.

“But who the hell would murder a nice woman like Aunt Martha for a mess of pork chops?”

“I doubt if the pig was taken to be butchered,” Shandy explained. “She may possibly have been kidnapped in the hope of extorting a ransom from the College. There have already been—er—threatening messages. You see, Belinda is no ordinary sow. She is a vital link in a chain of genetic experiments which Professor Stott of our animal husbandry department has been conducting over a period of almost thirty, years and is almost due to farrow. The piglets she produces, it is hoped, will constitute a major step forward in pig breeding. Therefore, while her value in money alone is not inconsiderable, her importance to the science of swine breeding may be almost incalculable.”

“Oh, now it begins to make sense. Was Aunt Martha taking care of the pig?”

“She was one of a—er—team of consultants. Professor Stott valued your aunt’s opinions highly. She will be a great loss to the college. And—er—to you, too, I’m sure.”

“Well, see, I hardly knew her,” the nephew confessed. “It wouldn’t be right for me to carry on as if I’d lost my best buddy, would it? But, well, we seemed to be getting along pretty good. The more I think about her, the worse I feel, if you really want to know. I was sort of counting on—oh, you know—maybe spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with her, havin’ a place that was kind of like home. It’s sure not going to be any picnic, staying here by myself.”

Corbin looked around him at the forest pressing in on the neat old house. “Must be lonesome as hell out here in the wintertime. I wonder how she stood it.”

“I asked her that myself,” said Flackley. “She said she never minded being alone, she could always find something to do. Lot of work to an old place like this. I’ll sure never be able to keep it up the way she did, unless I can find me a wife. Don’t know any pretty ladies that like to cook and clean house and wouldn’t mind settlin’ down with a lonesome blacksmith, by any chance?”

“You never can tell,” said Shandy. The buggy whip heiress flashed into his mind. Flackley impressed him as a decent sort. But that would still leave Tim with Lorene McSpee. If it was cleaning Flackley wanted, perhaps he’d do better with the demon housekeeper. It would be awful to have that woman slopping bleach water over Miss Flackley’s domain, though. Shandy, like the nephew, was feeling a deepening sense of loss. It was a damned shame that so useful a life could so wantonly have been snuffed out, that so self-respecting a human being could have been handled at the end with so little regard for the dignity she’d always maintained.

Corbin had made a good point there, about not knowing whether or not she’d been killed in the place where she was found. Being at her home, seeing how meticulously she’d kept everything up, he found it less and less possible to believe she’d driven the van up to the animal husbandry area of her own free will. To visit the barns at a totally unaccustomed hour, wearing an evening dress and a mohair stole, would have been totally out of character for her. Ergo, she probably didn’t.

Unless Stott was lying. Miss Flackley had, after all, been a woman, and a surprisingly charming one when she’d shed her working clothes and professional manner. Stott was by no means an unattractive man. Helen and Iduna had both gone on at some length about that very subject last night when they were straightening up after the party.

Stott was distinguished in his field, stately in presence, well lined in pocket. He had shown himself to the lonely farrier as a man susceptible to her femininity as well as respectful of her professional acumen. If by any remote chance he had asked Miss Flackley to hie with him to the pigpens to contemplate Belinda by moonlight would she have said him nay? Wouldn’t she, figuratively speaking, have thrown her mohair stole over the windmill and gone?