Just then a waitress arrived to take their order. She gave them both long looks before leaving to fetch their drinks.
“Your grandfather sent a letter to the Congressman.”
“The Congressman being your granddad.”
“Right. Turns out they were pals in the old days. And I mean the really old days, like before the first world war.”
Tucker nodded. “Okay, yeah. I think I heard something about that.”
“It also turns out those two were quite the desperados.”
“Woodrow? No. I can see him as a bit of an idiot, sure. He blew some of his own fingers off! But a criminal? A dangerous criminal? No way.”
She dropped her voice so low he had to lean forward to catch her words. “He tried to blackmail the Congressman.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“Keep your voice down,” she said. “You can never be sure who’s listening.”
“This is Greeley, not Washington, DC.”
“I’m quite aware of that.”
“Do you have a copy of the letter?” he asked.
“Not with me,” she said. “I came down here to talk with him about it, but before I could arrange an interview, he had a heart attack and died.”
Tucker sat back in the booth. “I ‘spect that puts an end to it then, doesn’t it?”
She fidgeted for a moment, and then their drinks arrived. The waitress set two beers on the table and was about to leave when she stopped and squinted at Tucker. “I know you,” she said. “You’re Woodrow Tucker’s grandson. You were a couple years ahead of me at Greeley High.” She offered her hand. “I’m Sue Mabry.”
“Mabry was our fifth grade teacher’s name,” Holly said.
“She’s my aunt,” Sue said. “She’s retired now. Spends all her time trying to keep the town’s crappy little history museum open.”
“This really is old home week,” Tucker said, smiling. “I’m Tucker, and yes, Woodrow was my granddad. This is Holly Coe. She went to school here, too, but she moved.”
“Seems like I’m the only one who hasn’t found a way out,” the waitress said.
Holly appeared sympathetic. “It’s not such a bad place to live.”
“Try gettin’ a date around here. If you’re lucky enough to find someone to go out with, there’s no place to go!”
“Sorry, kid,” Tucker said.
“I’ll keep your tab open,” the waitress said, then wandered away.
Tucker waited until she was beyond earshot. “You were going to say something about Woodrow’s letter.”
“Right. See, there’s a little problem. Your grandfather claimed to have a note from the Congressman which implicated him in one of their escapades.”
“From when? A hundred years ago?”
“Sixty-five, more or less.”
“Who cares?”
“See? That’s what I mean. If folks could just let this ancient history go, there’d be no problem at all.”
Tucker watched as she head-tossed a mass of blonde hair over her bare shoulder. It looked like the obligatory, post shampoo, here’s-hair-to-die-for shot in a commercial. He had to force himself back to the topic at hand. “So, who’s making a big deal out of it?”
“No one, yet,” she said. “But if there really is an incriminating letter floating around somewhere, I’d sure like to get my hands on it.”
“What, exactly, did the Congressman say in this letter?” he asked.
“Only your grandfather knew. My grandfather doesn’t remember writing to him, but then, it’s been so long....“
Tucker thought for a moment. “Wouldn’t the statute of limitations apply?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
She paused before whispering, “There was a murder involved.”
“Holy--“
“Tucker!”
“--crap!”
They sat in silence for some time before the waitress returned and asked if they needed refills. Neither did.
Tucker handed the waitress his credit card, suddenly inspired. “Can you tell me about this history museum?”
“There’s not much to tell. Aunt Kate runs it, but who’d want to go there? It’s tiny. She’s got a collection of old junk that nobody wanted. I can’t imagine why she cares.”
“Where is it?” he asked.
She gave him directions. He settled the bill and then said to Holly, “I’ll let you get dinner.”
“Oh, really? You paid for what? A whole beer?”
“Two. And one was an import. Hey, you came to me, remember? I’m just tryin’ to help you out. Besides, you’ve got an expense account, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’d like to see some of my tax dollars at work.”
She shook her head in defeat.
“Can I interest you in a museum?” he asked.
~*~
“This used to be the undertaker’s place,” Kate Mabry said after an exchange of greetings with Tucker and Holly when they entered the museum. “Some really bad hombres came through here.” She smiled. “Usually, in the front and out the back.”
“And on to Boot Hill?” Holly asked.
“The town cemetery didn’t really have a name,” Kate said. “They just called it the bone orchard.”
Tucker chuckled.
“Gruesome,” Holly said.
“Cowboy humor, actually. Not uncommon around here.”
“Lots of crime back in the old days?” Tucker asked, pleased by the woman’s enthusiasm and apparent knowledge of local history.
“Like most frontier towns, Greeley had an abundance of hard-livin’ folks. Mostly men, but some interesting women, too.”
Tucker glanced at a framed article from a Lubbock newspaper. He stared hard at the accompanying photo, then at the museum’s proprietor. “Is this story about you?”
“Actually, it’s about an auto race.”
Holly stepped closer to inspect the clipping. “It sure looks like you.”
“I was a lot younger then.”
“You never said anything about this when you taught our class.” Tucker gave her an admiring look.
The intervening years had been good to her, he thought. She still had the dimpled smile she displayed in the photo. The same impish grin, too. He forced himself back to the business at hand.
“Just out of curiosity, did the undertaker leave any records?”
Kate bobbed her head, waving a few errant gray hairs in the process. “They weren’t meticulous,” she said, “but they provide some details that would’ve been lost otherwise. The town didn’t have a newspaper. Probably didn’t have that many people who could read.”
“We’re curious about mysterious deaths in the early 1900’s,” Holly said. “Would the records reflect anything like that?”
“Some,” said Kate. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“Uh--“
“Hard to say,” volunteered Tucker.
“There were plenty of unexplained deaths,” Kate said. “Disappearances, too. And no law enforcement. My guess is most of the people who lived here liked it that way.”
“How ‘bout the Texas Rangers?” Tucker asked.
“I’m sure they rode through from time to time. Have you checked to see if they have anything on file?”
“Very little,” Holly said. She smiled at Tucker. “The office checked before I flew down.”
“What office?” Kate asked.
“Congressman Coe’s,” Tucker said. “Holly is the Congressman’s granddaughter.”
Kate seemed too lost in thought to be impressed. “Greeley’s got an awful lot of secrets. Desperate people, desperate times. You get hints and peeks at odd things and colorful characters, but you almost never get the full story about anything.” She walked over to a bookcase and retrieved a well-worn journal. The yellowed pages appeared brittle, and Kate took great care when looking through them for a particular entry.
“I’ve been meaning to copy this,” she said. “But my typing skills aren’t very good. It would take forever.”
“Why not hire someone to transcribe it?” Tucker asked.
“I’m lucky to afford the light bill,” she said. “Anyway, there’s a page or two in here devoted to a couple interesting ladies from the early days. Sisters Etta and Bessie. Etta had a gold nugget that was the talk of the town for years. Supposedly it resembled an armadillo. Or maybe a horned toad. I dunno. Something like that.”
“What happened to it?” Holly asked.
Kate shrugged. “I haven’t got the foggiest. Bessie’s name shows up in the undertaker’s records, but not Etta’s. Which, if you think about it, makes sense.”
“Why?”
“Because Bessie lived in town. Etta lived a couple hours away, by horseback. She’s probably buried pretty close to where she died.”
As the visitors prepared to leave, Kate put a gentle hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “I was sorry to hear about your grandfather. Woodrow was quite a character. Colorful. Not too many like him anymore.”
Tucker muttered a thanks, but something in the way Kate looked at him made him linger.
“You remind me of your mother,” she said. “I always liked her.”
“Thanks,” Tucker said. “I don’t really know much about her.”
Kate smiled. “Drop by some time. Maybe I can fill in a few of the blanks.”
“I’d like that.”
“Time to go,” Holly said.
~*~
They drove back to the church and Holly pulled in beside Tucker’s car. Only one other vehicle shared the gravel lot with them, and Tucker recognized the driver instantly.
“Oh, great,” he said. “It’s my aunt Nell.”
“Go. Talk to her. I’ve got to call the office anyway. I’ll be back to get you in a while. We can do that dinner you talked about.”
“Got a place in mind?” he asked, eyeing Bo’s restaurant. “I’m not really in the mood for barbeque, and we’ve pretty much used up all the other places I’m not afraid of.”
“We’ll think of something,” she said. “Meet you here at six?”
“Sure.”
She drove off in a spray of gravel, and he couldn’t help but wonder where she’d rented the car. Amarillo, maybe. Braniff flew there. So did TWA.
“Hey -- Tucker!”
Nell’s scratchy voice would have gotten his attention even if she hadn’t yelled, but flying under the radar had never been her style. Tucker shuffled toward her car and leaned into the driver’s window. “Hey.”
“Daddy named you in his will, y’know,” she said.
“Good to see you, too,” he responded.
“I didn’t see you at the grave.”
“I figured there was enough family present. Besides, Woodrow and I weren’t on the best of terms.”
“You thought he’d rise up and pick a fight with you?”
“C’mon, Nell. It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t I know. Listen, I talked the lawyer into giving me what Daddy left for you. I coulda checked it out myself, but it wouldn’t have been right.”
Tucker had never thought of her as a paragon of virtue, but he had to admit, this was pretty decent of her. “What’d he leave me? An overdue utility bill?”
“He left you this.” She handed him a tiny envelope emblazoned with the logo of the Eureka Savings and Loan.
“That’s it? No letter? No final words?”
“I was hoping for a thank you,” Nell said.
“Of course,” Tucker said. “Thank you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.” He checked his watch. “You s’pose the bank’s still open?”
“Maybe,” Nell said, rolling up her window. She drove off much as Holly had, without displacing quite as much gravel.
~*~
The Eureka Savings and Loan hadn’t quite closed when Tucker arrived. The teller looked at him with undisguised loathing as he pushed through the door. Tucker ignored her and went straight to the manager’s office.
After a short inspection of his identity, the chubby, balding man led him to the vault and a bank of safe deposit boxes, none of which appeared big enough to house more than a pair of slippers.
The bank official inserted his key and invited Tucker to do the same, then left.
Tucker extracted a surprisingly long metal box from its resting place. He placed the box on a table and sat down in front of it.
Here goes nothing, he thought. What’ve you got for me, Woodrow? One last kick in the pants?
He opened the box and found an envelope and a rock. He inspected the rock first, convinced -- despite any training in geology -- that it contained a significant amount of gold. He turned it in his hand, trying to see if-- Yes! When held just so, it looked for all the world like an armadillo.
The envelope bore a note scrawled in pencil on unlined paper. He had to hold it close to the desk lamp to decipher the faint handwriting.
Woody,
You remember that gal we always used to talk about? Well, the bitch got pregnant, and now her daddy’s lookin’ for me. I’m done with Greeley, but I need that gold.
You got to help me. Old man Parker will shoot me like a dog if I don’t marry that girl!
Besides, sooner or later, somebody’s going to figure out who killed the old woman. They’ll never suspect you. But me? I can’t risk it.
After I cash in the gold, I’ll send you your share.
Eldron
Tucker read the note several times, scrutinizing every word, especially the names. An idea began to form. The wall clock gave him twenty minutes until he connected with Holly. Time to go. A glance through the vault door confirmed it as the manager and the teller both stood with arms crossed and toes tapping.
He tucked the envelope and the nugget in separate pockets, left the empty box on the table, and exited both vault and bank. With any luck, he could catch Kate Mabry before she left the museum.
~*~
Kate was just locking up when Tucker hailed her from his car. She paused in the museum doorway while he parked.
“I need to ask you about the woman you mentioned,” he said. “The one whose gold everybody used to talk about?”
“Etta Munger,” Kate said. “What about her?”
“Is her house still standing?”
Kate pursed her lips and thought for a bit before answering. “Probably. I don’t think I’d want to go inside, though. The place is liable to cave in, if it hasn’t already.”
“Can you tell me how to find it?”
“Oh, that’s easy. It’s just off the road to Beaker Flats. There’s no turn off, you just head toward New Mexico and keep an eye on the northern horizon. You’ll see the ruins in the distance. I went out there a couple times, years ago. Got a curio cabinet, but it was in sad shape. Didn’t see anything else of value. What’re you looking for?”
“I’m not sure, really,” he said. “Evidence? I think I know who killed that woman, and I’d like to see where it happened.”
Kate looked surprised. “That would’ve been over sixty years ago. D’you think there’d still be any evidence?”
Tucker responded with a shrug. “It can’t hurt to look, can it?”
“But, why the sudden interest, and what makes you think you know anything about Etta Munger?”
He hadn’t planned to show her the letter, especially considering his earlier resolve to leave Greeley -- and his family -- forever. But the letter changed that, and he’d been given the opportunity to right some wrongs.
He handed her the old note and watched while she struggled to read it. She dug a magnifying glass from her purse and made simple work of it.
“This signature,” she said at last. “I take it you already know who Eldron is?”
He nodded.
“Then, you know he’s not someone you want to anger. He’s a powerful man.”
“He’s a murderer.”
??
?Maybe. You notice he doesn’t actually confess to anything in the letter. Ironic, isn’t it? The perfect politician: gets in trouble, demands money, and admits nothing.” She gave him a sympathetic shake of her head. “Are you sure you want to get involved in this? It’d be easier to just turn it over to the district attorney.” She appeared to give the notion some additional thought. “Although I ‘spect the DA wouldn’t be eager to do anything about it. He and Coe belong to the same party.”
“More irony,” Tucker said.
She squinted at him. “It’s the Parker reference isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“The Parker girl--“
“Was my grandmother.”
~*~
Holly greeted him with a wave when he pulled into the church lot. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting long,” he said.
She shook her head and smiled. “It’s steak night at the Cattleman’s Castle.”
“It’s always steak night at the Cattleman’s Castle.”
“Well, I’m up for it if you are.”
“Absolutely,” he said, “but I’d like to make a little detour first.”
“Oh? Where to?” Her blonde hair and blue eyes had a powerful effect.
He hadn’t intended to tell her he found the letter. Though he originally agreed with her that old transgressions should be put to rest, he wasn’t so sure anymore. He felt more than a twinge of guilt knowing his attitude could be so easily reversed when the issue became personal.
“Cat got your tongue?” she asked. The smile had grown wider, more inviting. And the sundress seemed to reveal even more cleavage than before.
Focus, Tucker!
He gave her a nervous laugh. “It’s just-- This is really awkward.”
“What is?”
He pulled out the letter and handed it to her. “I think this is what you came looking for.”
She opened the letter and scanned through it. “Hard to read, isn’t it?”
“No kidding. Who writes a letter with a pencil?”
She grimaced. “According to this signature, my grandfather did.”
He sat quietly while she examined the old note.
“I’d like to see this in better light,” she said. “And maybe with a magnifying glass. Would you mind?”
“Not at all,” he said.
“And,” she added. “I need to make another phone call.”
Tucker gently pulled the note from her fingers, folded it, and put it back in his pocket. “I understand. But right now, I’m going to drive out and take a look at the place where the old lady lived. You’re welcome to come along, or we can just meet up later.”