The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller (26 page)

"What in heaven's name is that?" she asked, thumping the bulge of my shoulder holster.

"Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Parsons. Sometimes it's necessary for me to carry a gun."

She gave an indignant sniff. "Didn't think you'd need it in here, did you?"

"Not really."

"Don't like guns, myself."

The bell tinkled over the front door and Wiley Huggins entered with a bag of things that smelled good. He squinted at me, not quite remembering where he'd seen me before.

"Peter Bragg," I told him. "I stopped by Saturday evening asking about a man named Jerry Lind."

"Oh sure, I remember now," he told me, putting his goods on the counter. He turned to Minnie. "Anybody come in offering to buy the place while I was out?"

"Quit your joking, Wiley. You couldn't sell this place, the town wouldn't let you."

"Oh it wouldn't, huh? Well, just let a body come in here offering the right price and you'd see soon enough what I'd do. And the town could go hang its hat on a willow tree for all I care. What about that bird you said was here this morning? Did he come back?"

"I haven't seen him."

"What about you, young fellow? Wanna buy the joint? Or a painting or something?"

"Not today. But I have another photo to show you. I'd like you to try to remember if you've seen him before. Recently, probably."

I showed him the photo of Dempsey. He adjusted his glasses and squinted at it.

"Oh, yeah. He's that mean-looking one. Asked a lot of questions. Didn't care to answer many in return."

"That sounds like him. His name was Dempsey."

"That I don't recall. I just remember the abiding interest he had in the Cove Pan-o-Ram in the front window there."

Huggins nodded toward the big splashy mural depicting area people and places that I'd noticed my first night in town. It was beginning to fall into place. My pulse picked up some as I went back outside and took another long look at it. And now I knew what made Dempsey change direction. I knew what he'd thought was going to get him elected sheriff. In a portion of the painting
representing the state park north of town, there was a patch of grass, with the stems thin at the bottom, thick, on top, and with broken blades, three over and four up from one another. I went back inside and tried to sound calm.

"Who painted it?"

"That's the first thing the other fellow asked," Huggins told me. "He was a bit disappointed when I told him half the town had a hand in it. Leastways most anybody who could hold onto a paint brush for the time it took to make a stroke or two."

"I don't get it."

"It was a real community effort," Minnie explained.

"We made it to be the centerpiece of the art fair we had over in the Square last spring," Huggins said. "Made a big hit too. When the show closed I decided to put her in the window here for a while so everyone in it could come by and admire themselves."

"But how many people actually worked on it?"

"I'd guess forty or fifty of us, wouldn't you, Minnie?"

"At least that many. Not just the painters in town, but everyone who had anything to do with organizing or staging the fair."

"I only spent about five minutes on the thing myself," Huggins said. "I got a business to run."

"What did Dempsey say when you told him that?"

"He wanted to know who'd worked on certain segments of it, but I couldn't tell him that, either. But I gave him the names of several people who were the major movers and shakers of the project."

"Who were they?"

"Oh, Abe Whelan and Charlie Baldwin, who owns one of the restaurants down at the cove. Big Mike and that policeman fellow, Hawkes."

"Hawkes?"

"Yes, he's quite a good painter. And I believe Joe Dodge was involved. And the Morrisey brothers, some local contractors. They built the stand we put her on too."

"Who oversaw the actual painting?"

"No one person all the time," said Huggins. "The crazy thing sort of had a life of its own. But I guess the people I mentioned did most of the bossing."

"Allison put in a lot of work too," said Minnie.

"That's right, she did," said the shop owner. "It's funny, thinking back on it. That Dempsey fellow made a rather lengthy list of the people I told him about. As if he was going to talk to every one of them. But he never did."

"How do you know?"

"Well, I was interested in why he was so all-fired curious about it. So later, I asked the people whose names I'd given him, thinking he might have told them more than he told me. But none of them had ever seen him. How about you? Feel like telling me what this is all about?"

"It involves some missing people. Dempsey was a detective from Southern California. He was subsequently murdered."

"Oh, my goodness," gasped Minnie.

"How'd that happen?" Huggins asked.

"He got careless. And one of the people who worked on that painting in the window killed him. And that same person, I'm convinced, killed another man today out at the Joe Dodge house."

"Oh, no!" cried Minnie.

"Who got it today?" asked Huggins, his eyes gleaming with interest.

"An insurance man named Stoval."

"Stoval," Huggins repeated faintly. He went around behind the counter and hunted around until he came up with a business card and turned to Minnie. "That's the fellow you said was in here this morning while I was up at the nursery."

Minnie raised one hand to her throat. I looked at the card. It was Emil's.

"What did he want, Mrs. Parsons?"

"He showed me a photograph," she said weakly. "Asked if I recognized the person in it. I told him it looked like Joe Dodge. He asked where Joe lived. I didn't like the way he was asking things so I hedged. Told him I didn't know for sure. So he left, and I saw him going around into the other places here on the Square. He must have been asking the same questions. I..."

She looked about her, as if searching for a place to sit, then stared blankly at me.

"What is it, Mrs. Parsons?"

"Well, I told you I hadn't seen Allison or Joe Dodge today. And it's true, I didn't. But I did call Allison, right after the insurance fellow left. I don't know Joe Dodge all that well, but I knew Allison was friendly toward him and I thought somebody else should know there was a stranger in town asking about him."

"What did Allison say?"

"Not very much. Her voice took a serious turn, but she just thanked me and hung up. I hope I didn't do anything wrong."

"I'm sure you didn't." And that probably explained why Allison and Joe Dodge were missing. But running had been a mistake. Especially in view of what followed. And it was puzzling that Stoval still had been searching for the money. He hadn't made the painting connection. So why had he been killed?"

"Oh, Wiley, I forgot," said Minnie, her voice still shaken. "Abe called again asking when he could pick up the Pan-o-Ram. Said he wants to get it done and over with so he can forget about it."

"I know, he's been pestering me all week. I told him I hadn't figured out yet what I'm going to replace it with."

"The painting in the window?"

"That's right," Huggins told me. "We're going to put her out of circulation until the fair next spring. Abe Whelan volunteered to stick it in a loft out at his place."

A distant, roundabout curve of an idea came soaring into my head. "Where does he live?"

"He's got a three or four acre spread a ways out of town where he keeps a couple cows and some chickens, like a lot of folks hereabouts. And a horse or two."

"What does he do for a living?"

"He's retired. Same as I'd be if I had any sense."

"Is he a native of the area?"

"Nope. He must have moved here—what, Minnie? Four or five years ago?"

"That's about right."

"Do you know what he did before he retired?"

"I don't know," said Huggins. "Do you, Minnie?"

"No, but Father might know. He and Abe play chess together and go off fishing from time to time."

"Is your husband at home now, Mrs. Parsons?"

"Yes. I was about to call and have him come to pick me up."

"Maybe I could give you a lift. I'd like to speak to him, if it won't spoil your dinner plans."

"Of course not. And it's nice of you to save him the trip down. I'll just give a call and tell him I have a ride."

"Fine. I have an errand to run. I'll be back in a few minutes. Oh, I assume you have a television set at home, Mrs. Parsons."

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"There's something I might want to watch on the evening news."

I left the little shop and trotted down to the corner where there was a phone booth. At this stage of the game there were things I didn't want other people to overhear. I tried calling Allison again, but there was no answer. I phoned Janet Lind.

"We have what you want," she told me. "They're letting me do a brief item on it early in the program. We couldn't get in touch with Mrs. Stoval, so we won't use the name. We'll do it right after the first commercial break into the show. At about three minutes past six."

I thanked her and started back toward the frame shop, then hesitated. I was afraid of missing something. I figured I was at the stage Dempsey was at just before he was killed. My nerves were getting jumpy and I was afraid there were some things I should have been paying more attention to as they went past. I went back to the phone booth and called the local police number. Chief Morgan was still out at the Dodge house, but the desk man was able to tell me the phone number of Fairbanks, the man who had led the search for the downed plane. I managed to reach him and told him who I was.

"One thing I'm curious about," I told him. "Before we left the campground to start up the mountain, I think you sent somebody back down river to look for any survivors who might have gotten down that far. Can you remember who it was you sent?"

"Oh God, not hardly. I had so many things to do that morning..."

"I know, Mr. Fairbanks. But it could be very important. It has to do with the job that brought me up here in the first place. The job I had to postpone in order to help out in the search."

It was no time to be quietly noble or self-effacing about having saved his marbles by finding the boy and getting the searchers over to the right part of the county to find the downed plane. He owed me.

"Let me think," said Fairbanks. "I was figuring one of the men with four-wheel drive would have the best chance of getting back among those old roads. Damn! I remember what the fellow looks like now but can't recall his name."

"Was it Abe Whelan?"

"That's it, sure."

I thanked the man and hung up. It was tenuous, but it was a possibility. Whelan hadn't been up on the mountain with the rest of the men. He was on the lower Stannis River. He could have spotted me bringing down the boy. He could have been nervous about my finding the car with Dempsey's body in it. He could
have seen me put my rope across the river very near to where the car was, and when I went to get Tuffy he could have cut the rope enough for it to part when a strain was put on it. And now he wanted to store the painting with the telltale grass strokes on it.

I left the phone booth reluctantly. I still felt I was missing something, as if somebody were doing feats of magic and I'd been watching their hands when I should have been keeping an eye on their footwork.

I went back and got Minnie Parsons and headed out of town. I wanted to think but she wanted to talk. I heard about the variety of jams she had canned the previous fall, the odd gradations in local weather and a rather long-winded tale that involved a local somebody named Mrs. Longworthy who had fallen and broken her hip the year before and now corresponded with missionaries in Africa. She still was on that one when I pulled up out front of her place and went around to open the door for her.

"And you can just leave your gun out here," she announced firmly, stepping out of the car. "Nobody's going to be carrying a gun into this house, thank you."

She went on ahead while I dutifully took off my jacket and unstrapped myself from the carrying rig. I stuck the .45 in the trunk and started after her, then remembered the revolver on my hip. I hesitated, then decided to leave it behind. If I carried it in and she spotted it, she might chuck me out of the place before I learned what I needed to know. I reached in to jam the gun and holster down behind the front seat cushion then trotted around the house after her. She was standing in the middle of the backyard talking to Big Mike, who was telling her some sort of story that necessitated a great windmilling of arms and a guffaw or two. He broke it off when he saw me and strode over to shake hands.

"An honor to see you again, Mr. Bragg. It was a fine and courageous thing you did up on that mountain the other day."

"It didn't take courage, Mr. Parsons. Just a lot of huffing and puffing."

"Come on in," he told me, leading me up the back stairs. "Would you like a beer?"

"Sure. Along with anything you can tell me about Abe Whelan, and the kindness to let me look at the six o'clock news on TV."

"Of course. Minnie mentioned it on the phone. What is it you want to see?"

"They're going to put on something that could be vital to the case I'm working on."

"Is that so?" He brought a couple of beers from the refrigerator and handed me one, waving me on into the living room as Minnie started to fuss at the kitchen stove. "Are you still looking for the young fellow who's coming into the money?"

"You remember that, do you? Well, I don't really hold out too much hope of finding him any longer. Now I'm a little more interested in learning the identity of somebody hereabouts who's done some bad things in his lifetime. He's living here under a different name."

"My gosh. What sort of bad things?"

"A little of this and a little of that. If I find him it'll make quite a stir."

It was almost six. Big Mike tuned in a color television set to the station I asked for, then called in Minnie from the kitchen.

"Big doings, Minnie," he told her, giving her a brief squeeze of the shoulders. "Mr. Bragg is looking for somebody living around here under false pretenses. Isn't that what you call her?"