Powder Keg (16 page)

T
here were four buggies, three horses, and a sleigh in front of Flannery’s mansion.

It was too cold to stand outside for long, so instead of lining up in the street, the neighbors just looked out their windows.

I went straight to the front door. Any other time I would have spent a few minutes studying the massive door and its intricate carvings. But then all I did was knock. A maid, her eyes so puffy and red from crying that they resembled wounds, stood back. I had my badge ready.

“It’s so terrible,” she said, sniffling. She was a big, sturdy blond woman, unmistakably Swedish. She wore a maid’s gray uniform with a white full-length apron over it.

“I’m assuming Sheriff Nordberg is here.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Please take me to him.”

“Sure.” She sniffled again, producing a dainty white handkerchief that was turning green. She put it to a tear-raw nose. “He was such a nice, decent man.”

The preacher who buried him would say the same thing. By the time the first sob exploded in the church, Flannery would already have been forgiven for all his considerable transgressions. All that remained would be the idealized portrait most of us get at our funerals. Behind closed doors following the funeral—that would be another matter. Then the real feelings, drawn like daggers, would stab the solemn air.

The maid led me down a long hall. The hardwood floor had been polished to diamond brilliance.

A study that six people could live in. One vast wall filled with books. A hardwood floor covered with Persian rugs, real Persian, not Sears and Roebuck Persian. A dry bar. A leather couch angled in front of a fireplace a short man could stand in.

And a desk with a surface size of a tennis court. But the fine-honed craftsmanship of the enormous desk was diminished somewhat by the man lying face down on it, a .38 near his right hand, a lurid pool of darkening blood dripping off the front edge of the desk, and splattering on the Persian rug below.

The doc and Nordberg stood in the west corner, talking.

Nordberg waved me over.

“Glad you came, Noah,” he said. “I didn’t want him moved until you got here. I sent a deputy for you but apparently you came on your own.”

“Just as I was about to eat pancakes.”

“At the Star Café?” the doc asked.

I nodded.

“They’re something, aren’t they?” the doc said. “I get hungry just thinking about them.”

“How about you look it over?” Nordberg asked. “You’ve probably seen a few more suicide scenes than I have.”

I shrugged. “Probably not many more. But sure, I’ll look it over.”

I spent ten minutes at it. I wondered why he wanted me to look it over. There was powder residue on the right temple and that was in line with a man putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. The .38 was probably a little farther away from the hand than I would have expected, but one thing about suicides—they usually look a bit funny one way or another. The head is at an odd angle or the wound doesn’t seem right for a bullet fired at such close range or—and this is the most common in my experience—the weapon is closer to the body or farther from the body than you would have thought possible.

But given my limited experience with situations like this, nothing seemed wrong in any particular way. No telling what will happen in the seconds following a man slumping over his desk when the bullet has ended his life.

I walked back to Nordberg and the doc. There was something about that huge room that put me in mind of being in church. I realized that we were all talking in lower voices than usual and that nobody had sworn.

“I guess I don’t see anything that bothers me,” I said.

The doc smiled, his wrinkled face almost simian when he flashed his false teeth. “I know a certain lawman who owes me five dollars.”

“You think there’s something wrong here?” I said to Nordberg.

He stared at the desk and the dead man. “The gun.”

“What about it?”

“It’s pretty far from the hand. Maybe two feet.”

“Could’ve slammed down against the desk and then skidded.”

“Watch out for the sheriff here when he gets an idea,” the doc smiled.

“First of all,” Nordberg said, “why would he kill himself?”

The doc said it before I could. “Because he killed those federal men so it would reflect bad on Mike Chaney. Then he rode out there and killed Mike and Connelly and Pepper, though killin’ those last two wasn’t no crime—not in my book, anyway.”

I said, “That’s about how I see it.”

“He just wasn’t the kind to kill himself.” Nordberg did some more staring. “Too selfish. And besides, he didn’t have any reason to be scared. If he needed an alibi for yesterday, he could’ve paid somebody for one. But he didn’t have an alibi and that’s what made me believe that he was probably telling the truth.”

“Yeah, but it would all have caught up with him in the end. You can’t kill as many people as he did without getting caught eventually.” The doc leaned down and picked up his bag. “You have one of your boys drop him off at the funeral home and I’ll get an autopsy out for you this afternoon.”

“That’s a fast autopsy.”

“Well,” the doc said wryly—and for a while there
I’d forgotten that he owned the funeral parlor as well as having the only doctor’s office in town—“since he shot himself in the temple, I don’t expect this’ll be a real complicated autopsy, Mr. Ford.”

And he winked at Nordberg. They probably both had a good time when the federal man got sarcastically upbraided.

“Unless you saw a stab wound I didn’t happen to notice,” the doc said.

“Just that ax in the back of his head,” I said.

He put on his derby. “Now I’m gonna go have some of them flapjacks you were talkin’ about. Can’t get ’em out of my head. Just like Nordberg here can’t get it out of his head that there’s something wrong with the situation here.”

After he left, Nordberg said, “I went to Denver for a two-week law enforcement program. And I learned one thing.”

“What’s that?”

He smiled. “Doc doesn’t know squat about autopsies.”

“I kinda had that feeling.”

He took a few steps toward the desk and the dead man. “So you don’t see anything wrong?”

“Afraid I don’t.”

“Maybe it’s just this feeling I have. I mean, maybe nothing
looks
wrong but it just—feels wrong. I don’t know any other way to say it.”

“I guess I see it the way the doc does. It was all coming down on Flannery. I’ve seen it happen quite a few times. People kill in a kind of frenzy. And sometimes that frenzy can last for quite a while. Weeks, maybe. But then something happens and they realize
what they’ve done. And it doesn’t matter even if they think they can get away with it. They just can’t face what they’ve done. And so they kill themselves.”

“I guess that’s where my doubts stem from. Flannery was a pretty ruthless character. Him feeling so guilty that he had to kill himself—that’s quite a stretch. For me, anyway.”

One of the double doors opened and Laura Flannery came through. There was nothing vivid about her now. Her regal bearing had given way to slumped shoulders and dead dark eyes. She wore a robe she had spilled something on. Either she hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.

“I’m really not up to this, Mr. Ford.”

“I’m afraid we have to talk. Not for long. But for at least a few minutes.” She walked over to the desk where her husband lay dead. She lay her hand on his shoulder and then closed her eyes tight, as if she was in some sort of spiritual communication with him. Then she extended her left arm to the gun on the desk. She apparently knew enough not to touch it. “That was a gun I bought him in Chicago. He didn’t like to carry large guns because they ruined the lines of his suit. He only dealt with the upper classes when he traveled, of course, and he didn’t want to look like—well, no offense, but he didn’t want to look like some dime-novel thug. So I bought him that. It was easy to hide and wouldn’t spoil the lines of his suit. He took it everywhere when he traveled.”

She looked up at Nordberg. “I bought him that
hunting rifle the same day. The one with the silver inlay? He always took it with him when you went duck hunting, remember?”

I liked her slightly more than I wanted to. She was one of those women rich men buy to reward themselves for their success. But now that was gone. She was just a woman grieving and I had to respect that.

“What was his mood last night?” I asked gently.

She didn’t seem to hear me—her hand was still on his shoulder—and then she looked up and said, “Fine. He was even making a few of his terrible jokes.” She smiled sentimentally at the memory. “I didn’t have the sense that anything was wrong at all.”

“Had you had visitors?”

“No.”

“Do you remember anything that might have upset him during the day?”

“If there was, he didn’t mention it.”

“Was his mood generally good the past week or so?”

She raised her head and looked directly at me. “Mike Chaney. Mike Chaney was stealing my husband’s money and humiliating him. I hold Chaney responsible for my husband’s suicide. I really do.”

She put her head down and began choking on her sobs.

“I won’t bother you any more, Mrs. Flannery. Thank you. I’ll leave now.”

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Nordberg said. “I’ll be right back, Laura.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Flannery,” I said. “I’m sorry your husband is dead.”

We were at the door. The sunlight off the snow was blinding when we got to the porch. The crowd had thinned; most of the vehicles had gone. The sun still shone, the kids still made snowmen, and moms still made hot apple cider for when the mister came in for the noon meal. The world was still the world, even without the important presence of one man named Flannery.

“I’m still not sure it was a suicide.”

“Somebody would’ve had to sneak in and knock him out and then kill him. With all the servants around, that wouldn’t be easy.”

“What if it was somebody already in the house?”

“Well, in my report it goes down as a suicide. Unless you can come up with something that changes my mind.”

“How about stoppin’ by the funeral parlor for me?”

“Sure. You want me to give Doc a message?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Tell him when he gets the body to look for a knot on his head. Something that would show he’d been knocked out. I didn’t see any but it might be a small one.”

“You don’t give up, do you?”

He said, “Not when I know I’m right.”

T
he first place I stopped was the livery. I was surprised to find Tim Ralston there. He was in back, talking to a man about boarding his horse. He didn’t look happy to see me. Or maybe it was just that the large black circle around his right eye was still painful. Somebody had given him a damned impressive black eye.

“Well, that sounds reasonable,” the customer was saying. “I should be back on Tuesday. The wife just doesn’t want to be responsible for the old fella. She knows how much I care about him. She’s afraid he’ll die or somethin’ while I’m gone and then I’ll blame her.” He spat a stream of tobacco juice at a stack of hay bales. “And the thing is, I probably would. So it’s better that I leave him here.” The customer gave Ralston a cold grin. “Of course, if he’d happen to die while he was boarded here, then I’d blame you.” He wasn’t kidding and Ralston obviously knew he wasn’t kidding. If I hadn’t been there to distract him, I imagined Ralston would have told the customer what he could do with his horse. If it would fit.

After the customer counted out some paper money and put it in the left hand of Ralston, he walked away, taking the alley route. Leaving Ralston to look at me and then look as if he was thinking of running away.

“We’re going to have a talk, Ralston, whether you want to or not.”

The black eye must have still hurt quite a bit. He touched it tenderly. Winced.

“I doubt your wife gave you that.”

“Why the hell you have to keep picking on me?”

“Because you made the mistake of sending your wife for me. But then you got scared. It’s a pretty good bet that whoever scared you also gave you that black eye.”

Behind me a voice said, “Came to get my horse, Tim.”

The voice was familiar but I couldn’t put a face to it. But I didn’t have to. Tremont came up next to me.

“You bet,” Ralston said.

He’d found another excuse not to talk to me. Tremont obviously got a good look at Ralston’s black eye but didn’t say anything about it. Which I thought was pretty damned strange.

Ralston went to get Tremont’s horse. And then I remembered something that Ralston had told me the other day. That people like Tremont had no need for a livery. They kept their horses at home on their ranches and farms.

Tremont lit a small cigar and said, “Got kinda rough on the street last night. Guess I had too much to drink.”

“Yeah, I guess you did.”

“But I guess our problem was taken care of.”

“Which problem would that be?”

He smirked. “The Flannery problem.”

He wore a black and red checkered winter jacket and he clapped his gloved hands together. It was colder in there than outside, which didn’t make a lot of sense.

“You really believe that, Tremont?”

“Yeah. Old man Flannery won’t be foreclosing now. He won’t have the stomach for it. His son got some of the land he wanted but he had a miserable life doing it.”

I said, “You sleep through the night, did you?”

“Meaning what?”

Without realizing it at first, I was slipping into Sheriff Nordberg’s notion that Flannery’s life hadn’t ended by suicide. It had ended by murder.

“Meaning can you prove you went home after the dustup in the street—and stayed there till this morning?”

“My wife’ll tell you that I did.”

“Anybody else? You got any ranch hands?”

“One. But he was over to the bawdyhouse. He was probably so drunk when he got to the cabin he stays in he wouldn’t have no idea if I was there. And what’s the difference? Flannery committed suicide.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? What the hell’s that mean?”

“The sheriff thinks he was murdered and it was made to look like a suicide.”

“Well, that’s a crock of shit if I ever heard one.” Then he gaped around. “Where the hell’s Tim?”

“How come you’re boarding a horse here?”

“It’s not mine. It’s my neighbor’s. He’s laid up with the shingles. I told him I’d get his horse shoed and pick up some hay for him. I brought my wagon here.” Then, “Where the hell is he? I want to get to the café and have some breakfast. I purposely didn’t eat this morning. Figured I’d get some flapjacks at the Star. Didn’t tell the missus, though. She’s sensitive about her cooking. She’d accuse me of not liking her food if she found out I went to the Star for breakfast.” Then, cupping his hand to his mouth, “Tim, where the hell are you?”

There was a smaller barn behind the one we were in. I assumed that was where the horses were boarded.

Tremont started walking toward the back door, toward the smaller barn. I was getting curious about Ralston myself.

Tremont went outside, stood there searching for Ralston. “He must still be in the boarding barn.”

I went outside and headed for the smaller barn. I guess I already knew what we’d find.

Half the stalls were empty. The place needed a good cleaning. The acid stench of horse shit made me start sneezing. The place was small enough that I could see after a quick walk-through that Ralston wasn’t there.

“Hell, here’s my neighbor’s horse,” Tremont said. “But where the hell’s Tim? He’s supposed to be getting this one ready to go.”

“He’s gone.”

“Yeah, but where?”

“Anywhere I’m not.” Then: “You give him that black eye?”

“What black eye?”

“The one that takes up about a third of his face on the left side.”

He shook his head miserably. “I got the whiskey flu. Hangover. I didn’t even notice no black eye.”

If he was telling the truth—and I wasn’t sure he was—he must have been suffering a damned bad hangover. That shiner of Ralston’s was hard to miss.

“If I see Tim, want me to tell him to look you up?”

“Don’t bother,” I said. “He wouldn’t do it, anyway.”