Ailing my foot. He was hoping to pry something out that’d give him an edge in cracking this case before me, so when I stepped out of the back room, I didn’t go far, about two feet was all, and kept an ear cocked for what the sheriff was fishing for. To my disappointment, all I heard him say was, “Rutherford, I’ve been having some problems with rats to home and the missus is scared to death of them.”
Thinks I, that’s the first I’ve heard of Mrs. Becky being scared of anything that walks God’s green earth.
“You got anything on the premises that could handle such varmints?” the sheriff asked. “Other than traps, I mean. I’m always forgetting where I put those blame things and stepping on them.”
Thinks I, Hard to step on anything when you’re all the time napping.
When Rutherford told him they had some poison that ought to do the trick, the sheriff wanted to know all about it, and if it worked on all kinds of rats, and if he had any recent customers who could recommend it to him, so I guessed he really did have rat problems. I didn’t stay around to hear the rest of his woes because just then I noticed who Archibald was helping up front. When he and his customer stepped out from behind a cabinet, I caught sight of the sheriff’s wife Becky. She didn’t seem to be after any rat poison though. It appeared that she and Archibald were chortling about something pleasanter than rats.
Seeing someone enjoy a chat with Mrs. Becky was something of a novelty. Pestilence and drought were usually more her kind of meat. Why, I would almost swear that I heard her tittering like a schoolgirl. I had my doubts that she’d ever made such a sound as that even when she’d been a schoolgirl. And then she turned and left, though not before she curtsied and Archibald bowed, as if they’d just agreed on something.
Needless to say, I was on fire to learn more about that, but when I buttonholed Archibald, he turned all red and forgetful, which left me only one choice — trying to pry something out of the sheriff’s wife. I’d almost talked myself into doing it, too, when I heard the sheriff and Rutherford stepping out of the back room. I took wing before the sheriff got a chance to ask what I was about.
Once outside, I caught sight of Mrs. Becky heading home, so I turned the other way, not wanting to draw attention to my interest in her, and ducked around the nearest corner. My getaway wasn’t clean though. Still looking behind me, I ran smack into the survey crew that had for the last week been trying to find the best place to stretch another railroad bridge across the river and bring Marquis into the twentieth century, same as Mr. Bell and his telephones were all a-pant to do. What with the considerable problems they were having driving stakes into river muck, those surveyors weren’t a happy bunch to begin with, and my knocking over one of their tripods didn’t improve their mood, nor mine, because all the cursing that followed drew the sheriff right to us.
“Injun Joe,” the sheriff bawled out, “don’t you dare punch that man. What’s wrong with you? I thought I warned you not to go knocking anybody into the next county again. And anyway, didn’t I tell you to head over to the cemetery? And you there. Yes, you. I wouldn’t plan on hitting my deputy over the back of the head with that stake, not unless you want to break the stake and spend the next six months in our hoosegow eating my wife’s cooking, I wouldn’t. We take a dim view of assaulting a lawman in these parts, particularly since Joe here’s the only man I got who’s big enough and brave enough to tackle a ghost. In case you haven’t heard, we’re right in the middle of a murder investigation here.”
That got me turned loose, along with several mouthfuls of smart talk about how they wouldn’t want to interfere with any lawman that brave, though they didn’t seem to care two figs about my size. They weren’t any pipsqueaks themselves. But I didn’t pay them much mind, not busy as I was wondering why the sheriff both was talking me up and doing his best to send me on my way. Mighty fishy. It got me to wondering if he was trying to get rid of me so that he could check out something himself. Thinking we’d see about that, I headed for the cemetery, only to double back to main street as soon as I was out of sight. I got there just in time to watch him duck into the law office of Etheline Spavin’s nephew, Perry Woodley.
Often as the sheriff dispenses free legal advice, I supposed it was possible he was dropping in there to discuss the fine points of the law. But I doubted it. The only opinion that ever counted with that man was his own, so I guessed that what he was really up to was having a word with Perry about his Aunty Etheline and that ghost.
I settled in with the loafers mooching chaws out front of the general store, waiting to see what might happen next. Ten minutes shoved off before the sheriff left the law office and headed straight to the Spavins’ riverbank mansion, where Miss Etheline was parked on her front veranda with Molly McIntosh riding shotgun and the usual assortment of cats who had the run of the place rubbing against their legs and bedding down in their laps.
The story of how Miss Etheline came to be wheelchair bound is wrapped in the mists of time, though most every explanation that pokes its head out of those mists says that her mother’s ghost pushed her off the same widow’s walk that she did a swan dive from herself. The poor lady must have been terribly lonely in the Hereafter to pull such a stunt as that.
For most of the next hour the sheriff sipped some of Miss Etheline’s famous tea and still managed to walk a straight line when he pushed off. That tea was known to be doctored with enough medicine to double the glow of a sunset. It had enticed many a dry throat and lonely soul to her door.
From there the sheriff headed to the reverend’s for a word with Alfreda. Of course, words were cheaper by the dozen with her, and she was still flinging them after him as he left. I could hear most of them fine from the tree I’d climbed up. She’d made up quite a list of the dearly departed who were buried out her front door but might still bear the world they’d left behind a grudge. As for my finding out about those ghosts, well, that had to wait until after dark anyway, didn’t it?
That night I started at the cemetery. Soon as Alfreda Scrim saw me at the gate she came charging out to let me know which ghosts I ought to be arresting. Her list of suspects seemed to include an awful lot of folks who’d never given her the time of day whilst they were still among the living. It took her an hour or two to fill me in on all that, but her jaw eventually tired and she left me alone to do my job. I had some pretty one-sided conversations with a headstone or two before everything came to a stop because a low, gargly voice was calling out, “Injun Joe-e-e-e-e.” So I knew the sheriff was hiding somewhere nearby and trying to have himself a little fun.
“What?” I asked, casual like, hoping that I sounded as if I had graveyard voices talking to me daily.
“You’re needed back in town.”
Soon as I got back to the jailhouse, I found out why. Archibald Dewitt was fluttering around worse than a moth with singed wings. It seems the ghost had been telephoning again.
“To who?” I asked, on the grumpy side, I’m afraid, ’cause another reason for the sheriff flushing me out of the graveyard had now presented itself. He knew Archibald was on the prowl and wanted me to handle it.
“Molly McIntosh.”
“Well, we better get on over there then,” I said, shoving past him.
“She ain’t home,” he told me.
That put a stop to my rushing off. “How’s that?”
“She didn’t answer her phone.”
That’s when I started running, fearing the worst, which was exactly what I found when I got to Molly’s place. She was stretched out on the kitchen floor, a glass of spilt milk beside her, one hand reached out toward her telephone as if it was still ringing, and a look of midnight terror stretching out her wrinkled face. “You’re running out of folks to call,” I said, speaking up so the spirit could hear me, though he or she never bothered answering.