“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it.”
“What was he sent up for?” Walts asked. His late-night movie vernacular was surfacing again.
“You name it,” Doc responded. “His most recent stint was for armed robbery, about five years back. He was sentenced to ten, but they let him out early because of his age.”
Great, I thought. Now they’re having Seniors’ Day at the parole board hearings.
I glanced over the pages covering the last few years, then put the papers aside for later. I wanted to read through them uninterrupted.
Carmen gestured with her pencil. “Mind if I take a look at that?”
“Be my guest,” I said. “Just don’t use anything without checking with me first.”
Carmen began reading, with Walts looking over her shoulder.
“What do you suppose Benjamin Simms was doing robbing graves?” Doc asked.
“I haven’t got a clue,” I admitted. “But there does seem to be some sort of a connection between him and an elderly woman over in Corinth. Her name is Melinda Wilcox.”
“Wilcox...” Doc McIlroy tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip. “Wasn’t Wilcox the name on the headstone where the old man’s body was found?”
I nodded. “Clyde Wilcox. He was Melinda Wilcox’s father. Trouble is, he’s supposed to have been buried somewhere else. In Indiana, according to the old lady.”
“Now that is damned odd,” Doc said. “How’d she get involved in the investigation in the first place? You mentioned a connection...”
“Somebody tried to break into her cellar last night. Tire tracks I found behind her house match tracks we found over at Willow Creek.”
“Hmm. What does she have to say about all this?”
“Not much,” I said. “She just keeps insisting that her father isn’t buried at Willow Creek Cemetery in the first place.”
“So how does she explain the watch you found up there?”
“I didn’t tell her about it,” I said. “I’m not much of a psychologist, but it crossed my mind that maybe she just can’t deal with the fact that somebody dug up her father’s grave. I couldn’t see much point in forcing her to face up to it.”
Doc nodded. “It may be best to leave it alone. Anyway, it’s clear enough that the grave belonged to her father. The headstone says so; the watch would seem to clinch it.”
It seemed like a good time to interject a little levity into the conversation. “Have you heard Luther Kroger’s latest theory?” I asked.
Doc McIlroy shook his head, a pained smile flickering on his lips.
“He thinks George Mackey did it.”
“Aha!”
“He figures ol’ George and the deceased had a grave-robbery scheme going, and were methodically looting our county cemeteries of all their buried valuables. The other night George and his accomplice had some sort of falling out, so George bashed his head in with a shovel.”
“That’s absolutely brilliant,” Doc said. “Luther should have taken over the family hardware business like his old man wanted.”
“Hey!” Carmen broke in. “It says here that Benjamin Simms was convicted of bank robbery, way back in 1936.”
“Like I said,” Doc commented, “the man had a long and illustrious career.” Carmen’s wide blue eyes regarded us over the tops of her reading glasses. “It says he was captured in Constantine County.”
I reached for the papers.
The printout provided a detailed account of Benjamin Simms’s exploits, back so far as the fifties. Prior to that, the information was skimpy. Doc explained that the Department of Corrections hadn’t begun computerizing their files until the late sixties and had only seen fit to transcribe complete records for the preceding ten years or so.
“So where do we get the earlier stuff?” I asked.
“We don’t,” Doc said. “They had a fire a few years back.”
If you think computerized records are any safer, you’ve never held a match to a piece of plastic.
Anyhow, what Carmen had already told us was about all there was to tell. With one very notable exception: Simms had escaped from prison, following that first conviction in 1936, and had later been recaptured.
I glanced up at Carmen. The significance of the next item clearly had not been lost on her.
The second time he had been taken into custody had also been in Constantine County.
In November, 1939.
I refolded the teletyped message and put it back on top of my desk. I still had no idea what was going on, but a few shadowy outlines were beginning to take form. That, and a little plot to get some volunteer work out of a certain young lady who was not on the county payroll.
“Walts,” I said, “don’t you think it’s about time you got over to the Wilcox place?”
He took his jacket and hat from the hall tree and started for the door.
“Mind if I come along?” Carmen asked.
Walts stood frozen in the doorway, with his jacket halfway on.
“That might not be a bad idea,” I said. “Melinda Wilcox might tell you something that she wouldn’t mention to Walts or me. Go ahead. If Deputy Walts has no objections, of course ...”
Deputy Walts didn’t mind in the least.
Carmen turned up again early the following morning, entering my office without bothering to knock. To do so might have presented some problems: Both hands were fully occupied with the substantial stack of loose papers she was carrying.
I hastily tried to get organized. Some impression I must have made — criminals running wild all over Constantine County and there sat the sheriff, feet up on his desk, reading the sports page and putting away the last of the morning’s glazed doughnuts.
“Got a minute?” she asked. “I’ve got the stuff you wanted.”
“Sure. Come on in.” I wiped some stray crumbs of sugar from my chin.
She searched my cluttered desktop for a bare spot, then unceremoniously dumped the papers on it before they had a chance to escape to the floor. “I must have spent half the night digging through the morgue over at the Gazette,” she was saying.
“If you keep this up, we’re going to have to put you on the payroll.”
The situation was a little embarrassing. Carmen had gone to a whole lot more trouble than I’d intended.
She was sorting through the stack, pulling an occasional copy out and putting it to one side. “Why don’t you start reading through these while I finish getting the rest organized,” she suggested. “I had them all in order, but the wind got ’em on the way over.”
I took the ones she’d already pulled out. The assortment consisted of a dozen or so articles that had appeared in old issues of the Gazette, apparently copied during the course of a laborious search through their microfilm files. She had thoughtfully circled the relevant story on each page, and written the date of publication along the border.
The one on top was dated August 23, 1936. It was a headline story and had to do with a bank robbery, right here in Mecklin.
Three men, the article said, as yet unidentified, had made off with an estimated eighteen thousand dollars, leaving behind a dead teller and a seriously wounded bank guard. One of the robbers had been shot, but all three had managed to escape in a black Buick sedan. It was suspected that they were the same men who were responsible for a dozen bank robberies over the past few months, stretching from northern Indiana to southern Iowa. If so, their take to date had been estimated at something in the neighborhood of eighty-five thousand dollars.