Capacity for Murder (Professor Bradshaw Mysteries) (26 page)

When he got home loaded with gold and made his deposit at the assay office, he was not a happy customer. He grumbled loudly and profusely to George, that’s the friend’s name, that he’d been cheated. George told him he ought to make an official complaint, but Moss went instead to confront Frederick Thompson at his domicile.

After he paid that visit he shut up about being cheated. Said not another word. George asked what happened and Zeb said nothing, he’d been mistaken. Then he suddenly started acting strange, getting regular haircuts, had fancy suits made. George said he thought Zeb was sweet on Mrs. Thompson.

For the first time in his life, a woman begins paying him attention? He’s likely to have serious lapses in judgment.

I can’t get near the Lincoln. Every reporter and gold-digger in the state is camped on the sidewalk, waiting for Ingrid Thompson to lead them to the loot.

I started following Moss. No one seems to be paying him any attention except one professional-type. I realized on the danged trolley we were both following Moss. I wanted to know who hired this guy so I tailed him until he got bored watching a moping millionaire, and he led me to 117 Cherry Street. I know you recognize the address of our old friends, the Pinkerton Detectives. They were feeling charitable, hoping for a clue from us I reckon, and said they were helping the feds. Looks like Moss was one of the cheated, but he’s not wanting to get involved and they think that’s suspicious. They think maybe he was helping Freddie Thompson hide the stolen gold, depositing it in his own accounts (no one would question him having a few bags of dust, would they?) but they can’t find any evidence to support that theory. And why would he help Freddie? Moss has got more gold than he knows what to do with.

I can’t find a dang thing on Ingrid Thompson or Ingrid Colby going back any earlier than about a year before her marriage, and we already know all that. I set Squirrel on it. How are you faring? What you up to?

Your humble servant,

Henry

Chapter Thirty-four

By late afternoon, Bradshaw was in Hoquiam in the records department of the county courthouse searching for the name Colby and not having any luck.

The clerk, a young fellow with an expansive mustache twirled at the ends, asked if he knew about what year he was hoping to find the Colbys. “Are they newcomers, I mean to say, or first settlers?”

If David had known Ingrid Colby as a child, then that would have been twenty years ago. “Early eighteen-eighties?” Bradshaw ventured.

“Well then, that’s a might easier. Not so many people here then, not nearly so many. And the only business was logging. Let’s check the old mill records.”

They checked the mill records, and the earliest tax records, the homestead filings, and the marriage records. Not a single Colby in the city. He tried another angle.

“How about Hollister?”

“David Hollister?”

“You knew him?”

“Read about him in the newspaper. Was killed out at Healing Sands.” They turned back to the old records and quickly found several Hollisters listed, including David, and the address of the original homestead.

“A main road runs by that old place now.”

“Do you have a map?”

“To see or keep? We got some for sale.”

“I’ll take one of those. Can you show me how to get there?”

The title clerk pointed him in the right direction on his rented bicycle, out of the city and up a well-maintained country road bordered by acres of logged land stubbled with massive stumps and an occasional farm scraped from the rubble. He found the peddling easy enough and the exercise welcome, and he appreciated the cool breeze of the overcast day. In Seattle, he cycled daily from his home on Capitol Hill to the university and back. It was his favorite mode of transport.

After awhile he came to a cluster of red-painted buildings all belonging to a general mercantile that served as a farm and feed store and post office. A few wagons were parked, their horses tethered. His was the only bicycle.

He wiped his face with his handkerchief and went inside the mercantile, the bell above the door announcing him. He was greeted warmly by a portly man behind the counter who said Bradshaw looked as if he could use a soda.

“What do you have?”

“Only the best. Take your pick.”

Four cool bottles were removed from an icebox and placed before him. Being associated with a university at times had its benefits. In this case since Bradshaw had heard a colleague lecture at length on food adulteration, he knew the brand of orange soda offered contained no orange, the ginger ale was possibly contaminated with ethyl alcohol, and the root beer colored with coal tar. But the sarsaparilla bore a local label he knew to be reliable. He happily bought a bottle and quenched his thirst, then asked about the Hollisters.

He said, “They used to have property on this road, I’m told.”

“Oh, sure. In fact, you just passed the place. No Hollisters there no more, they moved closer into town.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh, going on a quarter century. I was one of the first settlers.”

“Do you recall a family by the name of Colby?”

“Colby? No, no, I don’t think I do.”

Bradshaw showed the man the sketched portrait of Ingrid Thompson.

“You’re not looking for the Colbys, you want the Voglers. That’s the Vogler girl.”

“Vogler?”

“Oh, yeah, that place goes way back. One of the first to settle. A married couple ran a chicken farm.”

“They had a daughter? Ingrid?”

“Never heard of an Ingrid. No, they had a son, but he died when he was a young man not yet twenty. That girl in the picture was their niece. Marion. She lived with them. Orphaned, I believe.”

“Where is she now? Does she still live on the farm?”

“Not for a few years, I don’t think. She took over after her aunt died and tried to make a go of it, hired a few managers over the years. Don’t know where she found them, they never worked out. Well, young men these days all have gold fever, don’t they? Don’t want to put a shovel into the ground unless there’s a promise of riches.”

Bradshaw produced his map, and the fellow gladly traced a fat finger along the route.

He said, “The farm’s north a piece, oh, a few miles, I’d say, from where this county road ends. Never was much of a road, and it must be overgrown by now. Doubt you can get a wagon through. What kind of rig you driving?”

“Bicycle.”

“That’ll do part ways if you don’t mind hills. Likely have to walk some. It’s a good two hours if not more.”

“Who lives there now?”

“Nobody, far as I know. You know who you might want to talk to, if you’re wanting to know more about the Voglers, is old Doc Hathaway. He knows everybody around here, treated us all, and our children. If you continue on up the road you’ll find him just past the cemetery, the little red house.”

***

Nestled in a small clearing edging virgin forest and smack dab in a ray of sunshine poking through the clouds, the little red house had white trim and window boxes overflowing with nasturtiums in a rainbow of colors. A stone path wound through a front garden that freely mixed decorative flowers with practical vegetables and ended at the white-washed covered porch where old Doc Hathaway snoozed in a rocking chair. A lanky man, dressed for yard work, he looked all of eighty. He snorted awake at Bradshaw’s approach, and welcomed him, calling into the house, “Evelyn, we’ve got comp’ny!”

A petite white-haired woman came through the screen door, drying her hands on her apron. She looked closer to seventy, with a full face and rosy cheeks.

After introductions were made, a glass of well water gratefully accepted, and Mrs. Hathaway excused herself to return to her sewing, Bradshaw brought up the reason for his visit.

“Oh, indeed,” breathed the doctor, sucking his teeth. “I remember the Voglers. I didn’t like ’em. Not a one of them.”

“Why not?”

Doc shook his head. “Hard to put a finger on it. You know how it is with some, the minute you meet ’em you get to talking and swapping stories, and you feel grateful you’ve found a new friend? That wasn’t them. In all the years I knew ’em, I didn’t know ’em. They didn’t let you in, if you know what I mean. Mr. Vogler, now he never spoke unless it were to complain. Carried around a Bible, but I think he only read the parts about hell and damnation. He worked in the logging camps most of the year. That’s what eventually killed him. Mrs. Vogler ran the farm; she was the one with the brains, but she had no softness in her. No nonsense at all. Now me? I think a little nonsense is good for a body. Ain’t that right, Evelyn?” He shouted the last with a wink at Bradshaw, and his wife said she wasn’t eavesdropping, but yes, he was full of nonsense.

“They had a son?”

“That’s right, just the one child.” Doc’s smile faded as his eyes narrowed in recollection. He sucked his teeth again. “Shame about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, what can you expect, growing up in that sort of house? He was a rambunctious youth. I treated him for the usual cuts and bumps, got bronchitis once. Nice looking boy, only he knew it, and it didn’t take him long to think the world ought to treat him special for it. His mother put that notion in his head. Between her telling him he deserved the world, and his father telling him the devil was in him, it’s no wonder things turned out like they did.”

“And how was that?”

Doc cocked his head and studied Bradshaw. “Why is it you’re asking after the Voglers? It can’t have nothing to do with Healing Sands.” Doc laughed. “Don’t look so surprised, Professor. Your name’s been in the paper more than once with all the killing going on at the sanitarium.”

“I can’t give you the details just yet, but the Voglers might be involved.”

“Don’t see how they can be, they’re all dead.”

“Marion’s not.”

The doctor’s eyebrows shot up. “I haven’t heard about her for a few years now. She moved away. Where’d she go? She in trouble?”

Bradshaw showed him the sketch.

“That’s a good likeness, you draw that?”

He shook his head. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to answer any questions just yet, but I do have more to ask.”

“That’s all right, I’m happy to talk, though you do have me curious. When you find out, will you come back and tell me?”

“I will. What do you know about Marion?”

Doc took a moment to speak. A bee buzzed in the flower boxes then darted out to the garden. The sweet scent of late summer wafted on the breeze. The warm scent of the woods, the pine and fir and cedar, mixed with the heady scent of garden flowers.

“She wasn’t their child, but a niece on the mother’s side. Went to live with them after her mother died, in Portland, I believe. Rumor had it the mother wasn’t married, but nobody was giving out any details when they settled here. She fit right in with them, though. Far as I could tell, she took after her aunt, no warmth to her. I really shouldn’t judge since I never saw her professionally but the once. What she lacked in sweetness she made up for in hardiness. I felt sorry for her, being sent to that family.” Doc Hathaway looked away, fixing his gaze on the garden. He sat up a bit and took a deep, nasally breath.

“I don’t know if this signifies to what you’re investigating, Professor, but it’s nagged at me all these years and sometimes I wonder if I acted rightly. The one and only time I doctored Marion she came here to my house in the night all by herself. She was but fourteen years old. She’d been hurt bad and was bleeding.” He glanced up, and Bradshaw gave a nod of understanding.

“I had to stitch her up. I told her she didn’t have to go home, she could stay right here with the missus and me, but she wouldn’t stay. I thought of going to the sheriff, but the wife said that would just make the girl’s shame public.”

“Was it her uncle? The cousin?”

The doctor wiped his mouth; the rough skin of his hand rasped against the shadowed stubble of his jaw. “Well, the next day I got a message saying I was needed urgently up at the Vogler place. I went up there with my bag, expecting to find the girl collapsed, thought maybe she’d had internal bleeding. But it was the boy ailing.”

“How old was he?”

“Nineteen. He’d taken to his bed with a bellyache, and when the nausea and vomiting started his mother got worried and sent for me. He was senseless when I got there, and when I examined him I found scratches on his arms and neck and a nasty bruise on his leg. He’d been in a fight, and I knew who’d fought him. He never came ’round.”

“Did you tell his parents about Marion visiting you?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“When I saw their faces…they were in shock. For all their harsh ways, and their cold manner, they loved that boy. Spoiled him. Ruined him. But they loved him. I knew what that boy had done to the girl, but I didn’t think his parents should suffer for it. He was gone and wouldn’t hurt her again. What was the point in telling them?”