What happened to Mary?
The first time I heard foul play suggested was on the second day after she went missing. J.B. Hatfield was the one who said it. Tully Buford was there, too, and so were old Doc Dunaway and Earl Pierce. Doc is a retired veterinarian, had to give up his profession when his arthritis got too bad; he’s the quiet one of the bunch, likes to play chess with Cody Smith, the town barber, or just sit minding his own business. Earl owns Pierce’s Auto Body, but he spends more time in my place than he does at his own; lazy is the word best describes him, and he’d be the first to admit it. J.B. works for Great Northwest Building Supply. Young fellow, husky, puts on a tough-guy act now and then but not in an offensive way. He’s the only one who wasn’t afraid to stand up to Tully Buford. Two of them were always sniping at each other. One time they went outside in the alley to settle an argument, but no blows were struck. Tully was the one who backed down, not that he’d ever admit it. J.B. got the worst of the face-off, though. It was his goat that was shot a week or so later.
The bar talk that evening was all about Mary Dawes, naturally, and J.B. said, “I wonder if somebody killed her.”
“Now who’d do a crazy thing like that?” I said.
“Her ex-husband, maybe.”
“Wasn’t a bitter divorce. What reason would he have?”
“Hell, I don’t know. But it sure is funny, her disappearing so sudden and her car still out there at the auto court.”
Earl said, “Could be she went with a man one time too many.”
“Picked the wrong one, you mean?” I said. “A stranger?”
“Somebody passing through and stopped in at the Blue Moon for a meal. Lot of crazies running around out there these days.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” J.B. said, and looked straight at Tully.
Tully didn’t catch the look. He said to Doc, “Hey, Doc, you think Mary’s been killed?”
“I have no opinion.”
“You never have no opinion about nothing. Come on, now, you old fart. If she was killed, who you suppose done it?”
“There’s no point in speculating.”
“I asked you a question,” Tully said, harsh. “I want an answer.”
Doc sighed and looked him square in the eye. He’s mild-mannered, Doc is; usually he just ignored Tully. But Tully picked on him more than most and even a quiet old gent can get fed up. “All right, then,” he said. “If she was murdered, the person responsible might be living right here in Ridgedale. Could even be the same coward who runs down stray dogs and shoots defenseless animals in the middle of the night.”
It got quiet in there. Tully’s face turned a slow, turkey-wattle red. He said, “You accusing me, Doc?”
“Did you hear me say your name?”
“You better not be accusing me. I told you before, I never run down that mutt on purpose. You go around accusing me of that and worse, you’ll be damn sorry.”
“What’ll you do?” Doc asked. “Throw a rock through one of my windows? Pour sugar in my gas tank? Shoot some more cats in my neighborhood?”
Tully shouted, “I never done none of those things!” and grabbed Doc’s shoulder and squeezed hard enough to make him yell.
“Leave him alone.” That was J.B. He stood up and pulled Tully’s hand off Doc’s shoulder. “Doc’s got bad arthritis — you know that, you damn fool.”
“Who you calling a damn fool?”
“You, you damn fool.”
Tully was up, too, by then and the two of them stood nose to nose, glaring. I said, “Take it outside, you want to fight,” but it didn’t come to blows between them this time, either. The glaring contest went on for about a minute. Then Tully said, “Ah, the hell with it, the hell with all of you,” and went storming out.
Earl said as J.B. sat down again, “I was you, J.B., I’d lock up that new goat of yours and keep a sharp eye on your property from now on.”
It was the next day, Saturday, the manager of the old auto court opened up Mary’s cabin and found the bloodstains.
More than a few, the way we heard it, on the bed and on the bathroom floor. Long dried, so they must’ve been made the night she disappeared. The place was torn up some, too, from some kind of struggle. The county sheriff came out to investigate and didn’t find anything to tell what had happened, but he considered the cabin a crime scene and kept right on investigating.
News of the bloodstains really stirred things up. It looked like murder, all right, and we’d never had a mystery killing in Ridgedale — no killing of any kind since one of the DiLucca sisters shot her unfaithful husband thirty-five years ago. Nobody who came into my place that night talked about anything else. Tully Buford wasn’t among them, though; he never showed up.
“Blood all over the place,” J.B. said. “Told you she’d been killed, didn’t I?”
“Well, we still don’t know it for sure,” I said. “They haven’t found her yet.”
“Might never find her. Plenty of places to hide a body in all the wilderness around here.”
“Won’t make any difference if they do or don’t,” Earl said. “Whoever done it’s long gone by now.”
“Not the way I see it, he isn’t.”
“You think it’s somebody lives here, J.B.?”
“I think it’s Tully.”
“Come on, now,” I said. “What Doc said last night, he didn’t mean it literally. Did you, Doc?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“I don’t know. Tully’s a bully and a bunch of other things, but a murderer?”
“Shot my goat, didn’t he?” J.B. said. “Run over that stray dog on purpose, didn’t he?”
“Big difference between animals and a woman.”
“Mary might’ve turned him down once too often. Tully’s got a hell of a temper when he’s riled and drunk.”
“I sure hope you’re wrong.”
“I hope I’m not,” J.B. said.
Well, he wasn’t. And we found it out a lot sooner than any of us expected.
Sunday morning, the sheriff arrested Tully Buford for the murder of Mary Dawes.
Cody Smith came into the tavern, all hot and bothered, and told us about it. He got the news from his brother-in-law, who works as a dispatcher in the county sheriff’s office, and he couldn’t wait to spread it around.
“Sheriff found Mary’s dress and underclothes and purse in a box in under Tully’s front porch. Soaked in blood, the lot.”
I said, “The hell he did!”
“There was a bloody knife in there, too. Tully’s knife and no mistake — his initials cut right into the handle.”
“Told you!” J.B. said. “Didn’t I tell you he did it?”
“How’d the sheriff come to find the evidence?” I asked. “What set him after Tully?”
“Phone call this morning,” Cody said. “Man said he was driving past the auto court three nights ago, late, and saw Tully putting something big and heavy wrapped in a blanket in the back of his pickup. Decided he ought to report it when he heard about the bloodstains in Mary’s cabin.”
“Anonymous call?”
“Well, sure. Some folks, you know, they don’t want to get themselves involved directly in a thing like this.”
“But the sheriff took the call seriously?”
“Sure he did. Figured at first it might be some crank, but then he got to thinking about the trouble he’d had with Tully and Tully’s reputation and he decided he’d better have a talk with Tully. Got himself a search warrant before he went, and a good thing he did. Soon as he found the box and saw what was in it, he handcuffed Tully and hauled him off to jail.”
“Tully admit that he done it?” Earl asked.
“No. Swore up and down he never went near Mary’s cabin the night she disappeared, never saw the box or the bloody clothes.”