Longarm and the Dime Novelist Page 12

  “But . . . but we both know that Maxwell Pennington is a vile womanizer and probably has been cheating his father on the mine income for years.”

  “Yes, but being a womanizer isn’t the same as a murderer nor is cheating one’s father out of money.”

  Delia’s fists balled in frustration. “Custis, you and I both know that Maxwell Pennington is behind the disappearance of both Emily and his father.”

  “We suspect he is, but we aren’t completely certain.”

  “Then how—”

  “I don’t know,” Longarm interrupted. “But what I do know is that we have to go to Fallon and meet the man and then figure out some way to get evidence of murder . . . one murder, preferably two.”

  “I won’t sleep tonight thinking about what we might dig up tomorrow in that backyard.”

  “Do your best, Delia.”

  “I’m going to take some notes after we eat. Any problem with that?”

  “None at all,” Longarm replied. “What I do know is that tomorrow . . . unless we dig up a dog or something completely unexpected . . . we are going to give Mr. DeQuille one of the best stories he’s had in years.”

  Longarm slept well that night but Delia had not. There were dark circles under her eyes and she was out of sorts. “I swear I don’t know how you can sleep so soundly when there is so much on the line today.”

  “Why worry about it?” Longarm asked. “Either we find a body or we don’t. And like I said last evening, even if we can identify them, that doesn’t offer proof that Max Pennington will be convicted of murder.”

  Delia turned away from their upstairs hotel room window. “I’m ready to go and find Dan DeQuille.”

  “It’s only seven o’clock. I’m sure he isn’t in his office yet.”

  “Well, can’t we find out where the man lives and hurry this along!”

  “Take it easy, Delia. Let’s have a good breakfast and then we’ll go find the editor.”

  Delia was ready to go and when they went downstairs, the surly old guard from the Empire Mine was sitting in the lobby with his rifle resting across his knees.

  “Uh-oh,” Delia said. “I think we’ve got a problem.”

  “Stay back and let me handle this,” Longarm ordered.

  Pete stood up and it was clear by the look on his face that he was furious. “I hear that you were snoopin’ around the Pennington house last night.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “It’s a small town and there aren’t many secrets.”

  “All right,” Longarm said, “I was at the house last evening. I’m a United States federal marshal and I don’t have to explain my actions to you.”

  Pete’s mouth twisted and he spat, “Mr. Pennington pays me not only to watch over his mine, but also his house when he’s gone. Did you break into it?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Pete swore and tried to yank his rifle up, but Longarm was ready and drove a wicked uppercut into the man’s stomach. Pete folded up and collapsed to his knees, sucking for air. Longarm grabbed the man’s rifle and tossed it aside.

  “Get up!” Longarm commanded, grabbing Pete by the collar and jerking him to his feet.

  “I’ll get you for that,” Pete managed to wheeze.

  Longarm propelled the man over to a corner away from Delia and two other gawking guests. “Pete,” he said in a low voice, “I found a lot of blood in an upstairs bedroom covered by a rug. And in the backyard there’s fresh evidence of a grave. You are coming with me to the house this morning and if I find a body or even suspect that you’ve had anything to do with murder, I’ll take you down to Reno and put you in their jail. You’ll be charged as an accomplice to murder . . . and I suspect you were paid to do the job all by yourself.”

  “What!” Pete’s jaw dropped. “I ain’t ever killed someone except twice when it was in self-defense.”

  “You can tell that to a judge and jury. Now where can I find the editor of the Territorial Enterprise, Dan DeQuille?”

  “He lives alone in a room behind the newspaper office. What has he got to do with anything?”

  “He’s going to be a witness and get a story . . . one way or the other.” Longarm collected Pete’s rifle and motioned for Delia to join them. “Pete is coming along with us this morning. In fact, he’s going to do the digging.”

  “The hell you say!”

  Longarm drew back his fist. “You’ll dig, and you better hope that we don’t find a body or you’re under arrest.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “If we find a body, you can tell that to a Reno judge.”

  • • •

  Forty-five minutes later, Longarm, Delia, DeQuille, and Pete stood in grim anticipation behind the Pennington house.

  “Right there,” Longarm said, pointing. “Start digging, Pete.”

  DeQuille said, “I’d like to go upstairs and see that pool of dried blood.”

  “Go ahead,” Longarm told the man. “Delia, you came with me wanting some ‘real’ crime to inject into your dime novels. Maybe you’d like to accompany Mr. DeQuille for a few minutes?”

  She gave him a quick, emphatic shake of her head. “No. I can imagine what a big pool of dried blood looks like.”

  “It also has a smell,” Longarm informed her. “But you’d have to put your nose closer to it because it isn’t fresh.”

  Delia blanched and looked like she was going to get sick.

  “It’s one thing to spin a yarn with a lot of blood and guts being spilled,” Longarm said, intent on driving home a point to the intrusive dime novelist, “but quite another to actually see the real thing.”

  “I . . . I never had a real stomach for seeing death,” Delia admitted. “And if there’s a decaying body under this backyard, I don’t even want to be near it.”

  “Maybe you should go back to the hotel and wait.”

  “I’ll wait off a ways,” she decided.

  “Pete, start digging.”

  The man grabbed the shovel that Longarm had used the night before to pry off the latch to the back door. “I ain’t got anything to do with no murders,” he declared.

  “Just dig!” Longarm ordered.

  In less than five minutes, they uncovered a corpse and it was easy to see that it belonged to a man. Longarm grabbed the corpse by the ankles and with Pete’s help, they pulled it out of the shallow grave. It looked even worse than it smelled and Delia rushed down the hill toward town, a handkerchief pressed to her face.

  “Mr. DeQuille, you can see the suit and tie and there is an expensive ring on the finger. Is this the body of Mr. Pennington?”

  “Yes,” DeQuille said quietly. “There’s no doubt about that.”

  Longarm took a deep breath and quickly examined the decaying corpse. “The back of his head was smashed in so we know for certain that he was murdered.”

  “It must have been Maxwell,” DeQuille said quietly. “He and his father were very much at odds for the last few years.”

  Longarm quickly searched the man’s pockets. It was a grisly task but one that had to be done. He found a wallet and some change along with a pocketknife and little else.

  “Well, Pete,” Longarm said, quickly finishing this work, “as of right now you are a suspect in the murder of Mr. Pennington.”

  “Why me? I had nothing to gain by his death!”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Longarm said, walking away with the others following. “You might have been working in cahoots with Maxwell because it’s clear that you were being paid by the son and not the father. At the very least, you might have been the one who helped Maxwell bury his father.”

  “And why would you think that?” DeQuille asked, notepad out and scribbling furiously.

  “Because this ground is as hard as a rock. It would have required a great deal of
effort to dig . . . to almost chisel . . . that grave. I have never met Maxwell but from what I’ve heard and seen in the house he doesn’t seem like the kind of a man who would go to that much hard physical effort. It would have caused blisters on the palms of his hands and a great deal of exertion.”

  “That’s a good conclusion,” DeQuille mused. “Even trying to plant a small rosebush in this flinty ground is a major undertaking.”

  “So,” Longarm said, turning back to Pete, “that means that Maxwell Pennington had to have had some muscle and you are the prime suspect.”

  Pete backed up against the house, eyes flicking from Longarm to DeQuille and then down to the corpse. Suddenly, he screamed an oath and came at Longarm with the shovel.

  Longarm wore his Colt on his left hip, butt forward, and his hand shot to the weapon and yanked it free when Pete was almost on top of him. He fired and the shovel sliced down and hit him on the left shoulder. The pain was instant and intense, but Longarm fired once more and Pete went down twitching, one leg dropping into the newly unearthed grave.

  “You helped Maxwell Pennington bury his father!” Longarm shouted at the dying man. “Go out with a clear conscience, damn you! Admit that it was you or Maxwell who killed that man!”

  Pete’s eyes were glazing over and there was a bloody froth on his lips. They moved and Longarm bent close to hear the man’s last words of confession.

  “Fuck . . . you!”

  The pencil and notebook slipped from DeQuille’s hand and fell to the earth. He shook his head and studied the two bodies. “This is going to be a great story, but one I’d rather not have written. Mr. Pennington was a good and decent man and he sure didn’t need to die like that and be buried in a shallow hole in the ground.”

  “I know he was your friend and I’m sorry.”

  DeQuille sighed. “I guess the thing to do next is for us to walk back to town and find our only remaining undertaker. I really don’t have the funds to give Mr. Pennington the burial he deserves and as for Pete . . .”

  “The ring,” Longarm said, removing a ring from Pennington’s finger. “It’s gold with a large diamond. I’m surprised that Maxwell didn’t take it before he buried his father. I guess he decided that it would link him to the murder and it was a risk he couldn’t afford to take. Use it and whatever money is in the wallet I retrieved along with the value of the ring to pay for an impressive funeral.”

  DeQuille agreed. “I’ll do that and if there is money left over, I’ll give it to a worthy charity. But I’m curious about something.”

  “What?”

  “How can you disprove that old Pete didn’t murder Mr. Pennington and bury him with the same shovel you made him use to unearth the poor man?”

  “I can’t,” Longarm confessed. “But I’m going to Fallon and I’ll find Maxwell and play the best hand I can think of in order to get a full confession.”

  “You’ll run a bluff,” DeQuille guessed.

  “Yes,” Longarm admitted. “Because it’s really all I can do.”

  “I don’t think Maxwell will bluff. He’s not one to scare or panic and he’s smart.”

  “Then there is always torture,” Longarm said quietly. “If he is guilty of killing the entire Pierce family and then his own father, you can bet your bottom dollar I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

  “I’m never going to tell anyone what you just said about torture,” DeQuille said quietly. “But in this case, justice must be served and I wouldn’t hold it against you to use whatever force was necessary.”

  DeQuille looked at Pete’s body. “Did he really say what I think he said with his dying breath?”

  “Yes. Pete was a hard and dangerous man. He said he’d never killed anyone except in self-defense, but I don’t believe that even for a moment.”

  “I wonder if I can find someone to take care of Goliath,” DeQuille mused. “Despite his size and ferocity, I think he’s a very noble dog.”

  “That wolf dog can take care of himself.”

  “Goliath likes and trusts me. I may take him in myself. I think, in time, he could be a good and loyal companion.”

  “Then you should do that,” Longarm agreed, the stench really getting to him now. “Let’s go find the undertaker. I sure don’t envy him this job.”

  Chapter 19

  Two days later Longarm and Delia were being bounced around by a badly potholed road while seated in a stagecoach nearing Fallon, Nevada. The countryside was not as green as Longarm had expected, but he did see plenty of cattle grazing on the short grass and not a small number of sheep.

  “This country reminds me of Elko . . . dry and bleak,” Delia glumly observed. “If Maxwell Pennington inherited a big ranch out here in this poor country, I can’t imagine him raising any sizable number of cattle.”

  “Me, neither,” Longarm agreed. “But this is good sheep country from the size and number of flocks we’ve seen on these sagebrush hills and valleys.”

  The day was cold and the wind was blowing hard. Longarm figured that the driver must be miserable up on top but at least the recent snowfall had been just enough to keep the dust down. “Delia?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think you should remain in town until I confront Maxwell Pennington out at his ranch.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please,” Delia begged, “don’t leave me sitting in some hotel room waiting and wondering what in the world you are up to at the Pennington’s ranch. Why, it’s not completely inconceivable that Emily Pierce might even be hiding out there.”

  “No, it’s not,” Longarm agreed. “But if she is, then it will be pretty clear that she had a role in the murders of not only her parents . . . but also of the senior Mr. Pennington.”

  “You don’t think that’s possible, do you?”

  “Until I face Maxwell and confront him with the murder and death of his father, I have no way of knowing what happened.”

  “But, Custis, a beautiful, well-raised young woman of sixteen isn’t likely to have been a part in such terrible crimes.”

  “I hope not, but it’s possible.”

  “I just have to go with you to the ranch.”

  “What if Pennington has men and they all try to kill us?” Longarm asked. “Because that is also a possibility.”

  Delia’s expression grew somber. “Then we’d have to kill them first.”

  “There might be quite a few men with Maxwell. The odds would not be in our favor.”

  “But you’re a United States marshal, surely they wouldn’t . . .”

  “Emily’s father was a United States marshal and he was murdered, so why do you think they wouldn’t dare do the same to you and me?”

  Delia considered the question for several moments then answered, “Maybe there is a sheriff in Fallon and we can get him to come along with us.”

  “I’ve already decided that would be a good idea.” Longarm waved at a cowboy who was driving a few cattle northward. “But there is something to consider if I involve the local lawmen.”

  “What?”

  “In smaller towns like Fallon the sheriff is usually an elected official. To get elected and reelected takes money and support from the powerful and wealthy people in the community. That means that the sheriff is beholden to them and is most likely not at all interested in seeing them be arrested . . . especially by a federal officer of the law.”

  “Are you saying that if we ask the local sheriff to go with us to the ranch he might actually turn out to be someone that will side with Maxwell Pennington against us?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Longarm told her. “It’s happened to me often enough in the past that I try to avoid getting into that kind of a situation. In the worst case, it could prove to be a fatal mistake.”

  “So are you or aren’t
you going to visit Fallon’s sheriff?”

  “I’m going to visit him on some kind of pretext other than trying to determine if Maxwell is a murderer and if Emily Pierce is still alive.”

  “A pretext, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean a lie of some kind so that the man has no idea of why we are here.”

  “That’s right.”

  Delia smiled. “All right, let me come up with your pretext. After all, I’m the imaginative dime novelist.”

  “Okay, before we reach town, give me a great story that a sheriff will believe.”

  “Hmmm,” Delia mused. “Let’s tell the man that we are honeymooning and that Maxwell Pennington is an old friend that invited us to visit him and stay awhile at his ranch.”

  “Not bad.”

  “It’s pretty good, actually.”

  “Unless the sheriff insists on taking us out to the Pennington ranch.”

  “In that case, you’ll have to come up with a reason why we want to go out there alone.”

  Longarm considered the matter. “I’ll tell the sheriff that we want to surprise Maxwell. That should do it.”

  “Maybe.”

  Longarm had to grin. “So I saw you writing furiously yesterday and I was wondering how much of all this is going into your next novel. Remember your promise to change all the names, dates, and places.”

  “I don’t use dates and I’m always vague on places . . . mostly because I haven’t seen them and therefore can’t describe them.”

  “I understand.”

  “But you can bet that many of my future dime novels will be set in places that we have been visiting since we left Denver together . . . the Comstock Lode being one of them.”

  “Don’t get poor Dan DeQuille in trouble.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Or me.”

  Delia snorted a laugh and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Custis, you are trouble! And by the way, how is your shoulder feeling where Pete hit you with that shovel?”

  “It’s bruised and sore, but not too bad. If he’d have hit me in the head, it would have killed me.”