Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 30, No. 13, Mid-December 1985

Sheriff Bigelow and the Nickel-Plated Pocket Watch by G. S. Hargrave

“This,” Deputy Walts was saying, “is definitely very weird.” He chewed at the bottom of his full black mustache in growing perplexity. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d have to call it a definite ten.”

The whole strange business started on a Tuesday morning, late last October. Walts and I were standing in the middle of Oak Knoll cemetery — one of those long-forgotten grave-yards hidden among the stubbled fields of Constantine County — with our collars turned up against the morning chill. Around us there was an acre or so of headstones. Around that, there was a rusting iron fence. Beyond the fence, there was a field of withered cornstalks, a stand of oaks, and a thicket of bramble that a rabbit couldn’t get through.

The earliest arrival at Oak Knoll Cemetery had moldered in the ground for a good hundred and fifty years, disturbed only at monthly intervals by the brief intrusions of a county mowing crew. It would have seemed like a quiet enough place to wait out an eternity.

Until last night, that is.

What we’d found upon our arrival was half a dozen rudely opened graves, and a thoroughly morbid array of scattered bones, decaying bits of cloth, and pieces of crumbling wooden caskets, all mixed in among the first heavy fall of autumn leaves.

It was weird, all right.

“Better get us some pictures,” I said to Walts.

Walts started off down the hill toward where our car was parked. Meanwhile, George Mackey — the county caretaker — limped purposefully in my direction. I prepared myself. I know trouble when I see it coming.

“Jeez, Sheriff Bigelow — just look at this! We ain’ never gonna get ’em all sorted out!”

Not this side of the Second Coming, I thought.

Old George is more than a touch hard of hearing, and tends to shout straight in your face to make up for it. His normal conversational tone was something I could probably learn to live with. His breath, however, was another matter.

I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and made a show of polishing the lenses of my specs, giving me a momentary excuse to tilt my nose from his line of fire. “Just do the best you can, George. Don’t worry — no one will ever know the difference.”

“Hell,” he snapped, “you think they won’t know?” He glared at me for a moment in pop-eyed outrage, then pointedly turned his back. Mumbling to himself, he started off down the hill, his grayed head bobbing with each step. He angrily motioned for his crew to pick up their shovels.

This was going to be some morning.

Walts had come back and was clumsily focusing the Polaroid on a stray femur that lay at his feet. There was a flash and whir. He stood watching the results develop, eyeing the emerging image critically.

“It’s not for the family album, Walts. Just get on with it, okay?”

Walts got on with it.

Down the hillside, Mackey’s helpers were busily tossing bones and leaves into the closest open grave. George howled in fury, demanding a more even distribution of the departed.

After twenty minutes or so, Walts had finished up and was putting the camera back into its case. He glanced up at me. “It was vandals — right?”

I shook my head. “Too much time and energy involved. Vandals might tip over a few headstones, or empty a couple of cans of spray paint. But this? Hell — it would have taken a couple of grown men the whole damn night.”

“But if it wasn’t vandalism, what was it?” Walts’ voice carried a vaguely worried note. He sounded like a man who’s watched too many of those late-night creature-features, and is beginning to entertain some strange ideas.

“Graverobbers?” I shouted. “Satanists? An escaped band of lunatic genealogists? Now how the hell should I know?”

Things were bad enough without bringing Boris Karloff into the picture.

Walts blinked, shying away from this unexpected verbal onslaught like a scolded puppy. All six foot four and two hundred ten pounds of him.

I’m already an old man, and sometimes I fear I’m becoming a crotchety one as well. Or maybe I just need my bran flakes in the morning.

I sighed, motioning toward the squad car. “Lets get back to Mecklin. We’re not going to accomplish anything just standing around here with our hands in our pockets.”

Walts pulled his hands out of his pockets, looking even more miserable than before.

Ten minutes later we were on our way down the curving two-lane toward town. Deputy Walts was no longer talking to me.

At least that gave me some time to think.

The whole thing had me baffled. Walts and I had combed the cemetery thoroughly, failing to turn up so much as a stray footprint or a discarded cigarette butt. Of course old George had trampled all over the place in a frenzy before Walts and I even got there, doing an admirable job of obliterating any evidence that might otherwise have been found. Hell, I thought. He couldn’t have done more damage if he’d tried.

One thing did seem clear, at least: Whoever had been out there had had something pretty definite in mind.

Every grave that had been opened had belonged to a male, and each and every one had died in November, 1939.

Deputy Walts has never been the sort to hold a grudge for long. By Wednesday morning, things between us were pretty much back to normal. Ol’ Walts was as talkative as ever.

We were having breakfast at the Waffle House. I was trying to read the morning edition of the Mecklin Gazette, while Walts expounded his various theories concerning the trouble over at Oak Knoll Cemetery. All between mouthfuls of pancake and sausage.

I briefly entertained the thought that I’d have to offend him again if I ever hoped to get any peace and quiet. Millie Preston came over to freshen my coffee, drawing an admiring glance from Walts and providing for a short break in what was very much a one-sided conversation. As the back of her ruffled skirt retreated, Walts picked right up where he’d left off.

“So anyway, the old guy dies, and gets buried. Then a couple of days later the son finds out that the lottery ticket the old man bought is a big winner. So he and his wife tear the cottage apart but they just can’t find it anywhere, and suddenly the son realizes that it was in the pocket of the sweater that the old man was buried in. So late that night he takes a shovel and a lantern and heads over to the cemetery. But when he pries the lid off the casket...”

I looked up from the paper, catching just the last part of what he was saying. “Who? What casket are you talking about?”

Walts looked at me, his fork poised beneath his mustache. “The one on the late show last night.”

I raised my eyebrows, and pointedly turned my attention back to the newspaper.

The story was on page four, right between a piece on an infestation of giant African garden snails somewhere down in Florida and the long-range weather forecast. They never got around to saying just how big a giant African garden snail actually is, but they somehow managed to convey the impression of hordes of softball-sized creatures crisscrossing lawns and driveways on trails of glistening slime. It made for entertaining reading but wasn’t exactly my idea of concise, accurate journalism.

The story on the vandalized graves was another matter. It had been written by Carmen Willowby and was little more than a succinct presentation of what few facts there were. I knew Carmen had written it because she had called me at my office to ask if I had noticed the business about the dates on the headstones.

Carmen Willowby is new in town and, so far as I’m concerned, a welcome addition to our little Missouri community. I imagine a number of local young men must feel the same way, though for an entirely different set of reasons.

Carmen is in her middle twenties — a condition that I can scarcely recall — and is slim and energetic, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a quick and friendly smile.

Walts has certainly noticed her. The first time he saw her he moped around the office for a week, looking like something somebody had let the air out of. He hasn’t been the same since. If you want my theory, Carmen is so bright and goodlooking that poor old Walts has been afraid to say word one.

In addition to all those other admirable attributes, Carmen Willowby is also tactful: No mention was made of either names or dates in her article, sparing one tired old county sheriff Lord only knows how many angry calls from outraged next-of-kin.

Believe me, folks, my gratitude knew no bounds.

I folded the paper, deciding that the whole thing would blow over inside a week.

Which serves to prove another theory of mine: Getting older doesn’t necessarily mean getting smarter.

It was three thirty Thursday morning when my phone started ringing. I was not at all pleased.

It was my old buddy, George Mackey.

“They been at it again, sheriff! This time up at Willow Creek!”

“Huh?” My brain was still fuddled with sleep. “Who’s been at what?” I glanced at the glowing dial of my bedside clock radio. “My God. George, do you know what time it is? Go to bed. Call me in the morning.”

Don’t ask me why I still bother with that line. For twenty-five years, it’s never worked.

“The body snatchers, sheriff. I caught ’em desecratin’ up at Willow Creek.”

I was suddenly wide awake. “You caught somebody? George, what in thunderation is going on? Where are you?”

“I’m up in Freemont — where you’d be if you was any kinda sheriff at all — in the phone booth outside Humbolt’s gas station. Hell! Right across the tracks from the Farm Co-op!”

I turned on the lamp. “Yeah, I know where you mean. Listen, George — are you in any danger?”

“Hel-l-l no! They got clean away!”

Thank God for small favors.

“So what happened?” I was sitting on the edge of my bed, pulling my trousers on over my pajamas.

“I don’t like people messin’ around in my cemeteries, sheriff. I don’t like it one damn bit!”

George warmed to the subject, and I found myself listening to a lengthy dissertation on the probable habits of people who vandalized graveyards, delivered in words that might make even some of George’s charges sit up and take notice. It suddenly occurred to me that old George was drunk as a skunk.

“Just tell me what happened, okay?” I managed to get that in during a momentary lull in the avalanche of abusive language. Even George couldn’t tip a bottle and talk at the same time.

“After what happened over at Oak Knoll the other night, I figured I’d better make the rounds, just in case. Well, I come up on Willow Creek Road, and sure enough, I see a light out there. So I pull in the entrance and park my truck and get out. Guess they musta seen me, too, ’cause it weren’t more’n a minute till an ol’ pickup come flyin’ outa there like a bat outa hell. The damn fool nearly run me over!”

“Did you get a look at them?”

“Nope. It was too damn dark, an’ they was movin’ too damn fast. But I’d sure know that truck. It was an ol’ Studebaker. You don’t see too many of them no more.”

“Now listen to me, George, you just stay right where you are. I’ll be up there as quick as I can.”

“I don’t know, sheriff. S’pose they decide to come back? Maybe I better wait over at the cemetery.”

“Dammit, George! That’s exactly what I’m worried about! Just what do you think you’d do if they did? Stay put! I’ll be up there in no time.”

George belched, mumbled something noncommittal, and hung up on me.

I dialed Deputy Walts. “Walts? This is Bigelow.”

“Huh?”

“Get yourself dressed, Walts. We’ve got trouble up at Willow Creek Cemetery. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

We rolled into Freemont half an hour later, to find George Mackey sitting in his pickup next to the phone booth. He’d been comforting himself with a pint flask of Wild Turkey. It had had the same effect on George as it had on the bird it was named after.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I thought I’d better pick up Deputy Walts,” I said. “We’ll follow you over to the cemetery.”

“Don’t know what good it’ll do. They’re long gone by now.”

George dropped the truck into gear in a manner that would make a mechanic cringe and lurched out into the street. He proceeded down the deserted street and turned onto Willow Creek Road, pointedly ignoring the stop sign at the edge of town.

We arrived at Willow Creek Cemetery ten minutes later. There was a full moon overhead, and ground fog was rolling eerily over the surrounding fields. It was cold, and I could see my breath on the night air.

The door of Mackey’s truck creaked open, then slammed. The noise set a dog at a distant farmhouse barking.

“Over here,” Mackey said.

It was much the same as before, but this time only four graves had been opened. Three were close by, and the other was sixty feet farther on.

I turned my flashlight toward the damp earth surrounding the closest open grave. “Watch where you step, George!” I said. There were footprints and a clear set of tire tracks, and I didn’t want him trampling all over the evidence again.

Walts started over toward the far grave.

I played the beam of my flashlight over the three nearest headstones. Again, all 1939.

George bent over to pick something up from the grass at his feet. Something that glinted in the moonlight.

“Sheriff Bigelow,” Walts said, “I think you’d better come over here.” He was standing over the open grave at the edge of the cemetery, shining his flashlight down inside. His voice sounded a little strange.

I doubt if the grave had been intended for double occupancy, but that’s how things had turned out.

An old man in a denim work shirt lay face down in the dirt at the bottom of the hole. From the look of things, someone had whacked him across the back of the head with a shovel and started to fill the hole back in.

“Oh, Lordy!” George exclaimed. He had apparently been prepared for the possibility that someone might have made off with one of his bodies, but certainly not for an extra one’s being dropped off in so informal a manner. He hiccupped, pulled the flask from his back pocket, and drained off what remained in three clearly audible gulps.

I slid down into the hole. My first impression had told me that the old man was dead. A quick check for a pulse confirmed it.

“Better radio for an ambulance,” I said to Walts. “You can tell them there’s no hurry.”

“Right.” Walts trotted off toward the car.

“Who do you s’pose he is?” George whispered.

“One of your body snatchers, I guess.” I clambered up out of the grave, with George helping by tugging on my coat sleeve. After I was up, he kept hanging on to it.

“What do you s’pose they were up to?”

I recoiled, shaking him off my sleeve. If old George happened to breathe on an open flame, he’d be in serious trouble.

“Beats the hell outta me, George.”

Things had decidedly taken a turn for the worse. To begin with, we’d had some nefarious creep digging up cemeteries by moonlight. I’ll admit that had gotten me a little riled, but I could live with it. A guy had to. Nefarious creeps just aren’t all that uncommon nowadays.

Murder, though, was another matter entirely. A murderer running around loose in Constantine County was something I simply couldn’t tolerate.

Walts approached from the direction of the squad car. “They’ll be out in about twenty minutes. I told Bernice to call Jerry, too. Figured you’d want some first-class pictures on this one.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I saw some footprints and tire tracks over by the other grave. Why don’t you get out the kit and make some casts before everything gets ruined.”

“Sure thing.” He turned back toward the car.

Old George was watching the proceedings now with considerable interest. He still had something in his hand — the something I’d seen him pick up just before Walts had found the body.

“What did you find, George?” I asked

“Huh?” He looked down at his hand, then extended whatever it was in my direction.

I reached out and took it.

It was an old nickel-plated pocket watch, all corroded around the edges. It had been the unbroken crystal that had reflected the moonlight. I turned it over under the beam of my flashlight, wiping the dirt away with my thumb.

There was an inscription on the back, faint but still legible. The name “Wilcox” filled the center, inscribed large in an engraver’s ornate cursive. Smaller words circled the rim. I read them aloud: “To Clyde on your fiftieth birthday. Your loving wife, Emma. June 14, 1927.”

The grave where we’d just found the body of the old man belonged to one Clyde Wilcox, born June 14, 1887, died November 15, 1939. So much for its being a clue to the identity of our victim. Or for providing a hint at the killer’s motive, for that matter. It wasn’t exactly Tut’s burial treasure. It certainly wasn’t something you’d knock a man’s head in to possess.

I stuck it in my pocket.

We didn’t get out of there until well after sunrise. By then I was beginning to feel the effects of having had only four hours of sleep. I had Walts drop me off at home, intending to do something about that.

By the time I was back under the covers, our “unknown male Caucasian, age approximately seventy years” was already resting comfortably on a slab over in Doc McIlroy’s office, awaiting the good doctor’s attentions later in the morning. So far, the only remarkable thing about his latest guest was a complete lack of identification.

Doc seemed to have been unusually interested in the old man’s teeth when he’d first examined the body at the scene of the murder. If he’d noticed something significant, though, he’d kept it to himself.

Doc’s like that. He plays for effect, and likes nothing better than giving the appearance of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

I was hoping he would manage something along those lines fairly soon. Luther Kroger, our illustrious county prosecutor, would be breathing down my neck before the day was out, demanding that I arrest somebody for murder.

Hell — I didn’t even know who was dead yet.

I won’t go so far as to say that I don’t believe in coincidences, but I do hold them to be highly suspect. When a report came in late Thursday night from an elderly woman who thought she had seen a prowler, the fact that her last name was Wilcox certainly wasn’t lost on me.

Melinda Wilcox lived in Corinth, a flyspeck on the map some twenty miles southeast of Mecklin. Her big old house sat on the edge of town and belonged to a bygone era. It differed from its closest neighbors only in that, at nearly eleven o’clock at night, its every window was ablaze with light.

I pulled up to the curb and turned on the spotlight, probing the recesses at either side of the house from the safety of the squad car. As I slammed the door and started up the walk, I had a glimpse of someone peeking out at me through the lace curtains inside the front door.

I knocked and stood waiting. There was the sound of a latch being turned and of someone fumbling with a safety chain — two devices with little more than psychological value on a door with so many glass panes.

The door opened a crack.

“Yes?” The voice was small and tremulous.

“I’m Sheriff Bigelow, ma’am. Are you the party that reported a prowler?”

“Yes, I am.” She unfastened the chain and opened the door a little wider. “Won’t you please come in?”

“I think I’d better have a look around first. Where was it that you saw him?”

“Out in the back. I didn’t actually see anybody. I just heard some glass break. I think someone may have been trying to get into my cellar.”

“Go ahead and lock back up,” I said. “I’ll knock again when I’m done.”

The front door closed, and the latch clicked.

I went around toward the back between the side of the house and a tall hedge, flashlight in my left hand and gun in my right. Had I been following procedure, my gun would have been holstered.

There are times, I have learned, when following the prescribed procedure can get a man in very serious trouble.

I wished Walts had come with me, then chided myself for the thought. It wouldn’t have been fair to wake him up over something as trivial as a prowler call, especially since he’d covered for me all morning and most of the afternoon while I caught up on my sleep.

As it turned out, the back yard was empty. At the far end a gate stood open, hinges creaking in the wind. It led out to a narrow lane that ran along a field. I went over to have a look.

I played my flashlight over the ground. There were fresh tire tracks. Maybe I’d slop some plaster around, I thought. Why not? The stuff is cheap.

I turned my attention to the cellar door, four steps down and set into a cut stone foundation. A pane of glass had been broken out, and the heavy brass padlock that secured the door showed definite signs of an attempted forced entry.

I went around to the front of the house by way of the other side, holstering my .38 before knocking at the front door.

“Did you find anything, sheriff?”

“Looks like somebody tried to pry the lock off your cellar door. They broke a pane of glass, but there doesn’t seem to be any other damage.”

“Please,” she said. “Come inside. Would you like some coffee? I have a fresh pot on.”

“That sounds real good.” I stepped through the door, unzipping my coat. “It’s gotten chilly out. I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a hard frost by morning.”

I followed Melinda Wilcox through a foyer, across a darkened, Victorian-looking parlor, and into the kitchen. The kitchen was bright and warm, with a chrome-legged table and matching chairs and worn linoleum on the floor. There was a squat white refrigerator that must have been twenty years old. On the wall above it, there was one of those plastic clocks that looks like a cat. You know the kind I mean. The pendulum is the tail, and the eyes move back and forth with each swing.

Melinda Wilcox no doubt had been small, even as a mature woman, and her stature had been further diminished with the passing of a great number of years. She was quick to inform me that she was eighty-three years old. A sprightly eighty-three, I observed. She was quick and alert, moving around her vast kitchen with rapid, tiny steps, leaning all the while on a shiny black cane.

She poured coffee into a china cup, the spout of the pot tapping lightly against the porcelain with the shaking of her blue-veined hands.

“Would you like cream and sugar, Sheriff Bigelow?”

“No, thank you.”

“I think I’ll have a cup myself,” she said. “I doubt if I’ll be able to sleep anyway, after all this excitement.” She poured a second cup and arranged herself in a chair across the table from me. “Elderly people seldom sleep well, you know. I believe I read somewhere that it has to do with the metabolism.” She smiled in a charming fashion, revealing a nicely fitted set of dentures. “Of course a man of your age wouldn’t know anything about that.”

That’s the sort of comment that will keep me happy for a solid week.

“Do you have any idea who might have tried to break into your house, Mrs. Wilcox?”

“Miss,” she corrected me. “I am an old maid.” For a moment she seemed to slip far away, as if considering how she had come to be so, then suddenly she was back. “No — I really have no idea. But so much of this sort of thing goes on these days that I’m surprised I haven’t been bothered before now.”

“You live alone here?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Do you have any family in town?”

“Now, sheriff. I’ve lived in this big old house for over sixty years, and I feel perfectly safe and at home here. The doors and the windows all have locks, and if anyone bothers me again, I’ll simply pick up my telephone like I did tonight.”

“I’ll send my deputy over tomorrow to take another look around in the daylight, though I doubt if he’ll find much. I’ll have him check your doors and windows, too, just to be on the safe side.”

“That’s very kind of you,” she said.

I wasn’t quite sure how to bring up what I wanted to talk about next. It had to be talked about, though. “I — uh — I suppose you read about the problems we’ve had over at the Oak Knoll Cemetery.”

“Why, yes!” she said. “I think it’s simply terrible!”

There was an awkward silence. On the wall, the cat ticked.

“Something very similar happened last night,” I said. “This time over at Willow Creek.”

I had halfway expected some sort of a reaction. All I got was silence and a blank stare. Apparently the name had been nothing more than a coincidence.

“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” she said. “It certainly can’t have anything to do with me.”

“Of course not. It’s just that one of the graves that had been disturbed belonged to a man by the name of Clyde Wilcox. I was afraid you might have known...”

I hauled up short. I’d gotten a reaction, all right.

Her voice was so low it was almost inaudible. “My father’s name was Clyde Wilcox.”

Damn, I thought. “And your mother?”

“Emma,” she said. “Her maiden name was Emma Morrison.”

“Oh.” I fiddled with the coffee cup. “I see.”

Her eyes were intent on my face.

“There’s no need to worry,” I said abruptly. “There wasn’t really that much damage, and everything’s been put right now. I’m— I’m sorry to have had to bring it up at all.”

She gave me a long, searching look which rapidly turned into one of pure puzzlement. “I know what you’re thinking, sheriff, but it’s simply not possible.”

“I’m afraid it is,” I said. “Clyde Wilcox. Born June 14, 1877. Died...”

“No!” She was shaking her head. “I don’t understand this at all. My father was born on June 14, 1877. But his people were all from Indiana. There’s a family cemetery there. That’s where he and my mother are buried, sheriff. Not in Missouri.”

My discomfiture at broaching a painful topic was rapidly giving way to confusion. All of a sudden, questions were buzzing around inside my head like a swarm of angry hornets.

I suppose it’s human nature to want to find easy answers for complicated questions. That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I did.

With predictable results, I might add.

By Friday afternoon, Doc McIlroy was ready with his rabbit-in-the-hat trick.

He came through my office door lost in thought, puffing absently on his pipe. After a moment, he dropped it carelessly into a pocket of the lab coat he wore over his fall tweeds.

Doc can be a real fire hazard.

He glanced around the room, pleased to find that his audience would be somewhat larger than expected. Walts was still there, having found some excuse to delay his departure for Corinth and the Wilcox place; so was Carmen Willowby, who had shown up only moments before Walts had started making excuses.

Doc took a seat, favoring Carmen with a nod and a wink. He settled back, lacing his fingers behind his head, and pretended to study the paint flaking off my office ceiling.

“Is this a social call?” I inquired.

Doc dropped his gaze toward me. “Nope. I’ve got an I.D. for you on the old man, if you’re still interested.” He paused a moment for dramatic effect. “It was his teeth that gave him away.”

“How do you mean?” Carmen asked. A notepad and pencil had appeared out of nowhere, as had a pair of reading glasses.

“His dental work had a certain look to it,” Doc said. “What you might call ‘institutional ineptness,’ for want of a better descriptive phrase.”

“I don’t follow you,” Carmen said.

“The overall quality of the workmanship was very poor,” Doc explained. “I guessed he’d had his teeth fixed in prison. An institutional practice is occasionally the refuge of the barely competent medical practitioner.”

“Something like the position of county coroner,” I commented.

“I haven’t had any complaints yet,” Doc replied dryly. He turned back toward Carmen. “The laundry marks on his clothing seemed to point toward the same conclusion, and the fact that the markings had scarcely faded suggested a fairly recent release date. I teletyped his description to the State Department of Corrections, and had a probable I.D. on him this morning. When his records came in over the wire a while ago, I was certain.”

“They sure narrowed it down quick,” Walts commented. “There must have been a lot of prisoners who fit his description turned loose over the last few months.”

“But not so many of his age,” Doc explained. “Your average convict is fairly young. This guy was almost as old as Sheriff Bigelow there.”

I’d been waiting for that. “You gonna tell us his name, or not?” I asked.

“Benjamin Simms,” Doc said. “Age sixty-nine. He was released from Kuypersville State Prison about six weeks back. He was certainly no stranger to the place. The man did time in Leavenworth, and elsewhere. He seems to have spent more time inside than out.” Doc reached into a pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a rather lengthy teletyped message. “His records.”

“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.

Eighty-five thousand dollars! Even now, that was a very substantial sum of money. In 1936, it had been an unimaginable fortune.

The second article was dated two days later. All roads and highways leading out of Constantine County had been blocked since shortly after the robbery. Owing to the speed made possible by the recent innovation of radio-equipped squad cars, it was thought very unlikely that the desperate band of criminals had managed to escape. It was theorized that they had taken refuge somewhere close at hand. The story ended with a strong warning to the citizens of Constantine County — especially those living in the outlying farm communities — to be on their guard against strangers fitting the rather sketchy descriptions that eyewitnesses had been able to provide. County medical practitioners in particular were encouraged to exercise extreme caution in responding to calls for assistance.

I read quickly through the remaining copies. There was an account of the bank teller’s funeral. The unnamed guard would live but might never walk again. The FBI had arrived on the scene, but had so far succeeded only in antagonizing the local police and press with their “condescending attitudes.”

As the days had passed without new developments, the articles had become shorter and shorter, gradually drifting toward the back pages of the Gazette. Finally, at the end of a second uneventful week, there had been speculation that the men had somehow managed to elude police and FBI alike. “In all probability,” the article said, “they are now far from Constantine County, lighting cigars with ten dollar bills and laughing at J. Edgar Hoover with every other puff.”

It had been only two days later that events proved otherwise. When the story had hit page one again, it had done so with a vengeance.

The three fugitives had made an attempt to run a police roadblock on the Constantine county line. Unfortunately, they had unwittingly chosen one reinforced by agents of the FBI.

The driver had attempted a high-speed bootlegger’s turn but had succeeded only in flipping the big Buick off the road into a field. It had immediately become the focal point of a hail of rifle and machine gun fire. The three had somehow managed to escape to the cover of a drainage ditch, an instant before the car had exploded into a searing ball of flame.

In the gun battle that followed, one had been shot and killed before the remaining two had come to realize the hopelessness of their situation. The dead man — one Angelo Scarlotti — was later identified as the man who had ruthlessly gunned down the two bank employees. In the typically hard-boiled newspaper prose of the thirties, he was characterized as “a smalltime Chicago hood with an itchy trigger-finger and big-time ideas.”

Of the survivors, Patrick Kelly — the gunman who had been wounded during the robbery — was described as “a darkly handsome, smooth-talking young man with the manners of a real gentleman.” Kelly, it turned out, had been the mastermind behind the entire string of robberies. And the other...

“Benjamin Simms!”

“I thought you’d like that,” Carmen said.

There was an indistinct photograph of the two being led away in handcuffs, flanked by federal agents who looked as if they were costumed to try out for parts on The Untouchables.

Forty-eight years make a big difference in a man’s appearance, but the face of the one on the left was unmistakable.

It was that of the old man we’d found murdered up at Willow Creek Cemetery.

The second stack of copies dealt with the trial that had followed. It had never been discovered where the three had been hiding during the interval between the day of the robbery and the day of their encounter with the police. As for the eighty-five thousand dollars — the suitcase full of paper that had cost two men their lives — it had gone up in flames, incinerated in the trunk of the black Buick.

Each of the surviving gunmen had drawn thirty years in Leavenworth, and had probably considered himself lucky to have escaped electrocution. The conviction had been obtained without the testimony of the wounded guard, who apparently had still been in pretty bad shape and had refused to cooperate with the federal prosecutors out of fear of reprisal.

“That’s about it,” Carmen said. “Except for these.” She slid the last of the copies across my desk.

First there was an article off the wire service that had appeared in the Gazette on October 31, 1939. Two notorious bank robbers — Patrick Kelly and Benjamin Simms — had escaped from Fort Leavenworth Federal Prison three days earlier. Both were still at large. It was noted in passing that the two had originally been apprehended near Mecklin, Missouri, following a bank robbery there that had resulted in the death of a bank employee. The two were armed and were considered highly dangerous.

The next copy was of a headline story from the Gazette, dated November 16, 1939. It might have seemed unrelated to the others in our little collection, but I was beginning to entertain a suspicion that it wasn’t.

The story had to do with one of the greatest railroad disasters in the history of Constantine County. On the night of November 15, a westbound express train, carrying one hundred and fifty-three passengers, had collided head-on with an eastbound freighter hurtling across the snow-covered fields toward St. Louis. There had been a curve, and parallel sets of tracks. Presumably each engineer had thought that the rapidly approaching headlight would momentarily fly by to one side — an error that had cost over a hundred people their lives.

The accounts that had been written over the days following the accident were grim indeed. A number of the bodies had not been identifiable, and some that had been had gone unclaimed. Others known to have been on the train could not be found. Of the fifty or so who had — by spine miracle — survived the crash, more than a dozen weren’t expected to live out the week.

There were half a dozen more articles dealing with the after-math of the disaster. Unfortunately, none provided any additional information that helped me with my problem.

The final item that Carmen had unearthed was also of considerable interest. It was dated November 21, 1939, and told of the apprehension of Benjamin Simms.

His second encounter with the police had been a lot less spectacular than the first. He’d been found hiding in a barn by a local farmer, half frozen, half starved, and more nearly dead than alive. It wasn’t clear what had happened to him, but he appeared to have been severely beaten. He had to be carried out, and was taken to the hospital rather than the county jail.

That was the point where the pieces really started falling into place.

A few of them, anyway.

“I suppose it was the date on the headstones that got you started on this,” Carmen said.

I nodded. “That and my recollection that the train wreck had happened that year.”

“What conclusions have you drawn?”

I leaned back in my chair. “Somebody has been digging up graves all over Constantine County. They all belong to men who died in November, 1939. So it’s clear that somebody was looking for something worth going to a lot of trouble for. Right?”

“Right.”

“It’s just as clear that they didn’t know the name on the grave they were trying to locate, but that the approximate time and place of death were known. A train wreck with victims dying over a period of several days would account for it.”

“Except for one thing,” Carmen said. “All the graves that were dug up belonged to known people. Their names are right on the headstones. And most of them probably didn’t have anything to do with the train wreck.”

“But suppose there had been a mistaken identification of one of the victims right after the accident.” I said. “Think about the pocket watch. Think about what Melinda Wilcox said about her father’s being buried in Indiana. Think about the missing eighty-five thousand dollars, and about where Simms and Kelly might have been hiding during those two weeks before they were captured.”

Carmen leaned forward. “I thought the money burned up in the car.”

“That’s only what they said happened.”

A sudden look of comprehension came into her eyes. “They were hiding at the Wilcox house!”

“Exactly. And during their stay there, Kelly came into possession of the pocket watch. He kept it, and he had it with him on the night of the train wreck. When no one claimed the body, he was buried over at Willow Creek Cemetery. The name and date of birth on the headstone were derived from the inscription on the watch.”

“And that’s how Benjamin Simms came to be hiding in the barn. He was injured in the wreck, and was too badly hurt to get any farther.”

I nodded.

“But what about the real Clyde Wilcox?” Carmen asked.

I opened my desk drawer, and took out a copy of the death certificate I’d found an hour earlier, over at the county health department. “The real Clyde Wilcox died in 1933. As Melinda said, his body was sent back to Indiana for burial.”

Carmen looked puzzled. “But the money couldn’t possibly have been in the grave.”

“It wasn’t,” I said. “I think it’s hidden somewhere on the Wilcox property. It was the watch that the graverobbers were after. After forty years, Simms simply couldn’t recall where he and Kelly and Scarlotti had holed up after the robbery. He may have known the name of the town, but he couldn’t recall which house it had been. He couldn’t remember the names of the people there, either. Well, the name was on the watch. And he had a pretty good idea where that was.”

Carmen looked thoughtful. “So Melinda Wilcox knows a good deal more than she’s telling.”

“Let’s just say that she knew a good deal that she didn’t tell the police forty-eight years ago. I seriously doubt if she’s made a connection between what happened then and what’s going on now.”

“That still leaves a big unanswered question,” Carmen said. “Who killed Simms?”

I spread my hands, palms up. “Walts has been parked in front of Melinda Wilcox’s home for the last few nights, in case somebody decides to pay her another visit. He’s been keeping a pretty high profile. Maybe it’s time to make it look like we’ve pulled out, just to see who comes calling.”

“Who do you suppose it might be? Someone from around here?”

“It’s possible,” I said. “More likely it’s somebody Simms knew before he came back. Maybe someone he knew in prison.”

“Is there any way to check?”

“There might be. I’m going over to Kuypersville this afternoon, to talk to one of Simms’s old cellmates.” I smiled. “ ’Course, whether he’ll talk to me or not is another matter entirely.”

I parked the car outside the prison walls in the shadow of a guard tower and made my way to the warden’s office. Fifteen minutes later I was sitting in a day room, across a table from Bobby Jakes.

Jakes looked to be in his mid-fifties, with close-cropped gray hair and alert blue eyes. He had been Benjamin Simms’s roommate for the three years preceding his parole.

“So you’re Bigelow,” he stated. He took a deep drag on an unfiltered Camel, and spat away a bit of tobacco that stuck to his lip.

I nodded.

Jakes smiled wryly. “You’ve got a friend or two inside.”

“Funny how they never think to drop me a postcard.”

Jakes fiddled with the cigarette. His fingers were stained with nicotine. “We heard about Benny.”

“News travels fast, doesn’t it?”

Jakes looked at me frankly. “I liked old Benny, sheriff. A lot of the guys did. What do you want to know?”

“What I want to know is, who do you think killed him?”

“That’s easy. A guy by the name of Bill Salyers.”

I hadn’t expected cooperation, let alone such a direct answer. “Who’s Bill Salyers? Why do you think he killed Benny?”

“Salyers is a psycho punk who was here for a long time. Story was, he nearly killed some kids. Tried to set ’em on fire with gasoline.”

Christ.

“How’d he get out?”

Jakes shrugged. “He finished his sentence.”

“What was Salyers’ relationship to Benjamin Simms?” I asked.

“Benny was the only guy who’d have anything to do with him. Ol’ Benny was like that — you know, friendly with everybody. Salyers fastened onto him like a leech.”

“So why would he have wanted to kill him?” I asked.

“Because of the money,” Jakes responded. “Benny had this cock-and-bull story about eighty grand he and some guys had stashed away back in the thirties. He and his partner were going back to get it, but something happened. His pal got killed, and he wound up back in the slammer.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

“Hell, no. It was just an old con’s story.” Jakes ground out the cigarette. “But Salyers believed him. He asked about it again and again. And Benny never got tired of telling.”

“So you think they may have gotten together after Simms was released.”

Jakes nodded. “I’m sure of it. Find Salyers, and you’ve got your killer.”

He smiled.

“If you don’t, you’re gonna have some more bodies on your hands.”

Walts and I were sitting in an unmarked car, a block down the street from the Wilcox place.

“So that’s the story,” I concluded.

Walts turned the watch over in his huge hand, tilting it against the feeble shine of a streetlight to better read the inscription. “You think he’ll show tonight?”

“I’m almost sure of it.” I was checking my .38, hoping there would be no cause to use it. “I got the guy’s records from the warden, and they pretty much bear out what Jakes told me. The man is unstable. Highly volatile. According to the psychiatrist who examined him, he has clear homicidal tendencies.”

“I don’t much like it that Carmen is in the house,” Walts said.

“Neither do I.” I holstered my pistol. “But she was worried about Melinda’s being alone. Hell — I couldn’t order her to leave. She’s a strong-minded young lady, once she’s set on something.”

Walts thought that over. In what context, I couldn’t say.

“I don’t think she’ll be in any particular danger,” I said. “What Salyers is looking for is supposed to be in the basement.”

“Right.” Walts handed me the watch. “So what’s the plan?” he asked.

“I think our best bet is to take him by surprise — to get the drop on him before he has time to think or react.”

“How do you figure on doing that?”

“I’ll wait outside in the bushes,” I said. “You’ll wait in the basement, with your hand on the light switch. We’ll let him pry the padlock off and go in. I’ll follow right behind. When he comes through the doorway, you hit the lights. If he has a gun, he probably won’t have it out. With one of us on either side of him, he won’t try for it.”

“That sounds like it ought to work,” Walts said. “Except I don’t much like the idea of being locked up in a dark basement. Why should I be the one inside?”

“Because I’m the sheriff and you’re the deputy. Don’t worry,” I said. “It won’t be for more than a few hours.”

“A few hours!” Walts was clearly less than happy at the prospect. “What’ll I do down there?”

“Wait and listen.”

“Wonderful.”

We got out of the car, each with a walkie-talkie in hand.

“Put the earplug on the radio,” I said. “We don’t want that thing squawking and giving us away.”

“Right.”

We went up to the front door, and I rang the bell. Carmen Willowby opened it, without turning on the porch lights. “Anything unusual going on out there?” she inquired.

“Not yet,” I said. “Have you got the key?”

She dropped it in my hand.

“How’s Melinda taking all this?” I asked.

“She keeps asking why you’re so certain the prowler is coming back. When are you going to explain it to her?”

“Just as soon as we have Bill Salyers under wraps,” I said. “Keep the door locked. We’ll let you know when it’s all over.”

The door closed, and the latch clicked.

“Okay, Walts,” I said. “It’s time to visit the rats.”

“Rats?”

“Only little ones.”

We went around behind the house, and I unlocked the basement door. Walts had to stoop to go inside.

I played my flashlight around the dark interior, the center of which was dominated by a sprawling oil furnace. There were bundles of tied-up newspapers and old magazines, shelves of dusty Mason jars and flower pots, and all the other normal refuse that tends to accumulate in a disused cellar.

I pulled a chain hanging from an upstairs floor joist, and the damp basement was bathed in the feeble glow of a forty-watt bulb.

“You’ll have to keep the light out,” I said.

Walts was cautiously probing the dark corners with the beam of his flashlight. He had armed himself with a broom handle.

I hunted up some twine which I tied to the end of the light chain. This allowed Deputy Walts to take a position on a bundle of Life magazines stacked against the far wall, and to turn the light on without moving.

“There you go,” I said. “All comfy?”

If looks could kill, the citizens of Constantine County would have been looking for a new sheriff.

I left the basement, padlocking the door behind me, and pulled a folding lawn chair over among the bushes, where I sat down to wait.

It must have been about forty degrees out, and very damp. I snapped the collar of my coat shut. It was going to be a very long night.

“Sheriff Bigelow?” Walts’ voice came faintly through the earplug. “Sheriff Bigelow?”

I unclipped the radio from my belt, and held it close to my lips. “Yeah? What is it?”

“How long has it been?”

I glanced at the glowing dial of my watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes?” There was a pause. “Jesus — it seems like an hour.”

“Just keep quiet and listen.”

I was getting damned cold. My knees were shaking. I stood up, keeping to the shadows, and shuffled around to keep the old circulation going. At least Walts was warm. I wished I’d thought to bring a thermos of coffee.

I glanced at my watch again, noting that an hour had finally crept by. In the house, the lights downstairs went off. A few minutes later the upstairs lights went out as well. Carmen was doing a good job of keeping up an appearance of normality.

I sat back down.

Two hours. The moon had risen, casting ghostly shadows over the yard. My shoes were wet with cold dew, and my knees had developed a will of their own. The radio had been silent since Walts had last called, save for occasional police transmissions originating from beyond Constantine County.

I suspected that Walts had dozed off in his corner of the basement.

Suddenly there was a familiar voice: “This is Mecklin, calling Sheriff Bigelow. Over.” It was Bernice, our night-shift radio dispatcher. “This is Mecklin. You out there, sheriff? Over.”

I put the walkie-talkie to my lips, not expecting much. The signal from our base station back in Mecklin was weak enough, and my own radio only put out a meagre five watts.

“This is Sheriff Bigelow. Over.”

“That you, sheriff? I can hardly make you out.”

“This is Bigelow. You’re coming through very faintly. Over.”

I cranked the volume up all the way.

“YOU WANTED SOMETHING, SHERIFF?”

It was Walts, in the basement twenty feet away, who had nearly broken my eardrum.

“Keep quiet, Walts!” I whispered fiercely. “I’m trying to talk to Bernice.”

“SORRY.”

Bernice’s voice was fading in and out now, punctuated by bursts of static: “Sheriff? I’m not copying you. If you can hear me, I just wanted to pass this on. We had a DOA a while ago at County General. Doc McIlroy said to tell you it looks like a homicide. He said...” There was a pop and a hiss, then: “... had been dead three or four hours. He was found in a motel room. Doc said to tell you the driver’s license on the body...” Bernice’s voice faded completely away.

“Say again?”

“Doc said to tell you the body has been positively identified as Bill Salyers.”

Damn. Walts and I were lying in wait for a dead man.

“Thanks, Bernice,” I said.

Walts, with his radio below ground level, would have heard only my half of the conversation. I hastily turned down the volume control, beating him by only an instant.

“What’s up, sheriff?”

“I was talking to Bernice. It seems Bill Salyers has gotten himself murdered.”

From somewhere out in the darkness, there came a sharp metallic snap.

“So what are we waiting around here for?” Walts asked.

“Quiet!” I whispered. “I think I heard something.”

A moment passed as I listened intently for an unusual noise. The house and yard remained deathly quiet, save for the rustle of dry leaves in the wind. Then, just as I’d decided there was nothing amiss, there came the unmistakable sound of breaking glass.

It had seemed to come from somewhere around toward the front.

I noticed that my hand was on the butt of my .38, and that I had unconsciously unsnapped the holster. I clipped the radio to my belt, leaving the earplug in my ear, and took my flashlight in my left hand.

I hurried along the side of the house toward the edge of the front porch, and stood listening from just around the corner. A cut telephone wire hung limply at my elbow, slowly twisting in the wind. I pressed my back to the wall and brought my revolver to the ready.

There was utter silence.

Crouching low, I cautiously peered around the corner. The porch was bathed in moonlight. There was no one.

I went around to the front and climbed the steps.

I flicked on my flashlight. Someone had stuck tape across a pane of glass in the front door, then neatly knocked it out.

There was a tiny voice in my ear. “Sheriff Bigelow?” It was Walts. “Sheriff? I think I hear someone moving around upstairs.”

Oh hell. I reached down to shut off the radio, opened the front door, and went inside.

In police work, there’s really no such thing as a controlled situation.

I crossed the unlit foyer, entered the darkened parlor, and stopped at the base of the stairway. There were muffled voices overhead. One was that of Carmen Willowby. I couldn’t make out the words, but there was a note of fear in her voice.

A door opened at the top of the stairs, and light streaming down from the room beyond cast the elongated shadows of two figures across the floor in front of me. I ducked back into the darkness just as the top stair creaked.

They reached the bottom of the stairway. Carmen was in front, her face catching the faint light of the moon that spilled in through the lace-curtained windows. A figure pressed close behind her, drawing her head roughly back by a fistful of blonde hair.

There was a steely glint at her throat.

The blade of a knife.

“The key,” a voice rasped. He gave her hair a sharp jerk.

I felt a jolt of recognition. I knew that voice.

“It’s in the kitchen.”

The hand holding the knife lowered, and the figure shoved Carmen in the direction of the kitchen. She slipped, falling to her knees.

That was the moment. I stepped forward, clutching the butt of the pistol tightly in my fist, and brought it down smartly on the man’s head.

He dropped like a sack of potatoes, taking a telephone and its stand along with him.

I felt over the wall and found the light switch. “You all right?” I asked Carmen.

She nodded, her face pale. I could tell she wasn’t, but she hid it very well.

“What about Melinda?”

“She’s okay,” Carmen said. “She’s hiding upstairs in a closet.”

At that moment there came three heavy thumps, each more violent than the last, followed by a fourth that was accompanied by breaking glass and splintering wood.

I’d forgotten about Walts, whom I’d left padlocked in the basement. The results were a seriously bruised shoulder and about three hundred dollars in structural damage to Melinda Wilcox’s house.

Walts came bounding in through the front door, revolver drawn.

“You’re late,” I commented.

He holstered his gun and made a beeline to Carmen Willowby.

The crumpled figure in the corner was beginning to emit groans. I went over and picked up the knife, then pulled his arms around behind him and slipped on a pair of handcuffs.

“Hey!” Walts said. “That’s George Mackey!”

“Yep.” I rolled George over. His eyelids were beginning to flutter. “I should have figured it out before now.” I pulled a long face. “Luther Kroger’s never going to let me hear the end of this.”

“I don’t get it,” Walts said. “How did George know about the money?”

“Simple. Benjamin Simms told him. Mackey must have caught him and Salyers over at Oak Knoll Cemetery on their first night out. I imagine he promised to help them in return for a cut.”

“But why did he kill them?” Walts said.

“In Salyers’ case, it was plain and simple greed. With Simms, it was revenge.”

“Revenge? For what?”

“I think we’re going to find out that ol’ George here was the bank guard whom Scarlotti shot during the robbery, way back in ’36. That’s how George came by his bum leg. And that’s why George figured the money was rightfully his. He only called us over to Willow Creek the other night to cover himself. I’ll give odds that if we compare the casts of the tire tracks we found with the tires on George’s pickup, we’ll have a perfect match.”

By the following afternoon, George Mackey was cooling his heels in a cell in the county jail. Luther Kroger was preparing an indictment — or would be anyway, once he’d run out of people to call and tell how he’d solved the Willow Creek murder case. Walts, Carmen Willowby, and I were over at Melinda Wilcox’s place, sitting around her kitchen table and sharing a pot of tea while we tied up a few loose ends.

“But why was it that you never went to the police?” Carmen was asking.

“I suppose I should have,” Melinda said. “I knew what they’d done. But Mr. Kelly was different from the other two. He was such a kind man. Such a gentleman. And he was so badly hurt! At first we thought for sure he was going to die. He would have, too, if it hadn’t been for me.”

“You were in love with him,” Carmen said gently.

Melinda looked away from us, out through the kitchen window toward the distant fields. A moment passed, then she nodded. “I wasn’t so very young by then, Miss Willowby. When I should have been thinking about love — about getting married — I was taking care of an ailing mother.” She smiled sadly.

“Mr. Kelly was like a breath of spring air blowing into a sickroom. He made me feel a way I’d never felt before. When he promised he would come back, I never doubted him for a moment.”

She glanced down at the pocket watch she had given to Patrick Kelly almost half a century before, then placed it on the table. “And now I see that he did come back. But not for me.”

I got to my feet, and Walts followed suit. “If you don’t mind, we really do have to take a look.”

Melinda Wilcox nodded.

It didn’t take Walts and me long to find it. There was a loose stone in the basement wall. In the hollow behind it, there was a rusted metal cash box.

I set it on the basement floor and used my pocketknife to scrape away the scales. Walts and I exchanged glances. I pried open the lid.

What we found inside was a moldy mass of confetti. A home for mice and beetles.

“Put it back,” I said.

Walts returned the box to its hiding place and slid the stone back into the opening.

Melinda Wilcox watched us as we entered the kitchen.

I made a decision. An easy one.

I sat down at the table, shaking my head. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Two men dead, all over an old convict’s fantasy.”

Melinda Wilcox blinked, then slowly placed a trembling hand over the pocket watch. Her fingers closed, and she held onto it tightly.

I glanced at her as we left the room. Her eyes were moist, but she was smiling.