“We’d prefer more traditional guy-and-gal roles,” she said, “but I got ordained and Roy didn’t. He was in the army. You must got a lot of money, living in New York City.”
“I spend a lot of money living in New York,” Bartels said. “That’s not the same thing.”
“We warn folks on the radio against that city, against any city, just in case some of them is tempted. Our town can’t afford to lose more people. We’re underpopulated.”
“You got a robber in town,” Bartels pointed out, “you could afford to lose one.”
Roy Hanigan was one of the biggest men he’d seen off a football field, with a slightly rearranged face that suggested his time in the army — or somewhere else — hadn’t always been on a winning side. He wore a patchy brown beard that hid some of the scars. His eyes were deepset and serious. He had a moth-eaten sweater over a wool shirt, faded jeans, heavy-soled boots.
Jeanie introduced Bartels as the “almost” criminal. “Lou and Howard figured they had their man.”
“Lucky Howard didn’t shoot you,” Roy said. “He and Henry married the Everly sisters.”
“Dead Henry?”
Roy nodded.
Thinking of the large woman struggling with the deputy, Bartels said, “Which boy got the big sister?”
“Katie and Imogene both have meat on their bones. But Imogene’s an inch taller. She’s the one married to Howard. You know who’s boss in that family. It ain’t Howard. Can’t say Henry was in charge at his house, either.”
“Can’t say much about Henry at all,” his wife said. “Losing him seemed to shake Katie. Guess something like that would shake me, if I didn’t have burial insurance on my sweetie. You want to see the desk, Mr. Bartels?”
It was an oak rolltop of the sort he could pick up at any auction for a few hundred dollars. He offered the couple three fifty, which was full value but not so extravagant they would wonder. When they looked at each other, it was clear they had been hoping for more.
“Guess we won’t do much better,” Roy said. “And this little business sure needs the money.”
Bartels wrote a check and said he would arrange shipping. While Jeanie took over the tiny control room and gave a folksy news update, Roy Hanigan chatted with Bartels about the radio station. The couple kept on the air from ten in the morning until six in the evening, playing recorded music most of the time. On Mondays there was a phone-in garden show, and sometimes on Saturdays Howard and Imogene Cross would come in, Imogene singing hymns while Howard played the guitar.
“Didn’t happen this Saturday,” Roy said. “Since the bank got robbed, the sheriff’s people have been on the road twenty hours a day. Figure they’re gonna find Joey Robbins dead if they find him at all. It’s been five days, and there’s been a freeze every night.” Roy poured coffee from a thermos, handed a mug to Bartels. “They’ve searched through every barn and root cellar in the county.”
“They think it was someone local?”
“It’s a pretty good bet. If I was gonna come off the highway to rob a bank, I’d pick somewhere that looked bigger than this place. So the robber had to know there was money here. You had dinner? Suppose you want to get back on the road.”
“I don’t like driving at night,” Bartels said.
“Lot of deer on the roads,” Roy Hanigan agreed. “There’s a place in the village that’s open to seven if you want to eat. Not great food, except for the canned gravy.”
“What about a motel?” Bartels said.
“Big chain up on the interstate, about five miles.”
“Sounds good,” Bartels said. “Can you and your wife join me for dinner?”
He followed the big-finned convertible that Roy Hanigan said he was restoring a mile and a half into the village, past the mini-mart and gas pump, where the lights were still on and more cars half-blocked the road. The Wig-Wam was a six-table, linoleum-floored room with pumpkin pie under a fogged plastic lid and a chewing gum rack at the cash register. Only one table was occupied. The glum-faced deputy, Howard Cross, sat with a tiny, florid man in a shearling jacket.
“Howard, you look beat,” Roy said. “How’s Katie taking it?”
“Pretty good. She screamed I was a lazy, no-good moron and her sister should’ve done better.” He pushed mashed potatoes into a deep gravy well. “That was after she calmed down.”
The man beside him laughed.
“This is our alderman, Kenny Fogel,” Roy said. “We’re too small to have a mayor, so we got an alderman. Mr. Bartels bought our desk and decided to stay over. Running into Howard and Lou shook him up.”
Howard nodded but didn’t apologize a second time. The Hanigans and Bartels took seats at the neighboring table.
“Howard thinks we should’ve caught the guy that shot Henry,” said the alderman.
“How so?” Jeanie asked.
“Katie talked to Henry about five minutes before you found him,” said Howard. “Five minutes later, you’d called in and the dispatcher had the word out. That means the shooter didn’t have much time to get away. So unless the bad guy drove straight up to the interstate, someone should have seen him.”
“I came down from that direction,” Bartels said, “and didn’t see a car.”
“That’s helpful, Mr. Bartels. The deputies should have asked you.” Fogel gave a squinty look at Howard that the deputy didn’t meet. “So the shooter was on the county road at least until the Waubeeka turnoff. Unless he ducked in somewhere nearby.”
“Could he have been on foot?” Bartels asked the deputy, just to get him talking.
“If he was on foot, he’d have been seen. Lou and the other guys searched behind the station. There’s no footprints by the creek except all the ones they left.”
“You’re assuming it’s a man,” Jeanie Hanigan pointed out. “Women shoot people. For all you know, I coulda blowed Henry away before Mr. Bartels arrived.”
“Can you shoot a gun?” Alderman Fogel asked.
“Good enough for that distance.”
Howard made a face. “You and Roy are a little hard up for money, aren’t you?”
“Who isn’t around here?”
“So why’d you leave sixty-three dollars in the register?”
“Panicked.”
The deputy looked at Fogel. “She’s almost convinced me.”
The alderman shook his head. “If she did it, Howard, you gotta cover it up. Can’t have the county’s only ordained preacher charged with murder. People over in Buckham County would talk.”
The deputy nodded. “Guess you’ve lucked out, Jeanie.”
They had dinner, and after Howard Cross picked up his hat and went back on duty, Alderman Fogel moved over to their table. He had bright eyes and an obvious curiosity about Bartels that he expressed by asking questions about the antiques business. Bartels answered the questions without overdoing the display of knowledge.
“My father had the store before me,” he said over coffee, “but the business has changed.”
“In what way?”
“Competition from imports is a lot stronger. What looks like a two-hundred-year-old desk may have been made in Indonesia last summer from reclaimed mahogany. No knowledgeable customer will be fooled, but it puts price pressure on the real thing.”
“Because the knowledgeable customer will buy a look-alike?”
“Some of them will, yes.”
Roy Hanigan leaned into the table. “Kenny, tell Mr. Bartels how much Joey Robbins had at the bank.”