Chapter 4
I began to laugh, of course.
The thought of gallons of sticky, icy liquid covering the floor of a convenience store, of Sharks flying into the air and landing flat on their fannies, of everything colored bright red, blue, and yellow—it was simply hilarious.
At least it was funny to someone who didn’t have to clean it up. It wasn’t so funny to think of how sticky the mess would have been and of finding yellow or red goo under the counters months later or of people getting hurt when they fell.
I knew how maddening it was to clean up chocolate, and sticky, icky Frozen Rainbow gunk might have been a worse job.
But I didn’t have to do the scrubbing and mopping or witness the falls, so I laughed, and Joe joined in. We finished our dinner with laughter bubbling through the dining room.
Then the phone rang. I answered, and I wasn’t surprised to hear Hogan’s voice. I was surprised to hear what he had to say.
“Lee!” He sounded gruff, which was unusual. “What’s this about a shooting out there?”
I took a couple of breaths before I answered. I hadn’t told Aunt Nettie about finding the pistol, so how had Hogan found out?
“Well,” I said. “Nobody was hurt.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“Since it was only an acrobat—I mean an accident! It was only an accident, and nobody was hurt, so I didn’t think we had to report it to the police. I just got around to telling Joe about it a little while ago.”
“I’m more concerned that you found a stray gun.”
“I was going to ask Joe for the number of the Bailey girl—the one who is handling the sale of her parents’ house. She ought to know something about the gun. If she doesn’t, then we should turn it in to law enforcement, I guess. Joe will know what the law is. Can’t you ask the feds if there’s a connection between a certain weapon and a crime?”
“Only with a specific crime. Not to a general listing of crimes. Hey, is Joe there?”
“Sure.” I handed Joe the phone, and he punched the speaker button. “Yah?”
“Joe, I’ve got a question about something from Warner Pier’s history. Do you remember the date when that crazy holdup that wasn’t a holdup happened at the Country Convenience Store?”
“Not off the top of my head! Just that it was the July before I was a junior in high school,” Joe said. “And why on earth would anyone need to know that at this late date?”
“Digger’s been talking about the gun around town,” Hogan said. “One of the old-timers remembered something odd about it.”
“I could figure it out by looking at the Gazette.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. “It made the newspaper?”
Joe shook his head. “No, Lee. I’m sure the Davis family was able to keep it out of print. But something much more noteworthy happened that night that did hit the news. Meyer ‘Curley’ McWhirley died.”
Hogan replied with a “Hmmm,” but I snorted with laughter.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “No real person could be named Curley McWhirley.”
“Oh, he was a real person,” Joe said. “One of the town nuts. I thought you’d remember him, Hogan.”
“Nope. I didn’t move to Warner Pier until a few years after you graduated from high school. So? Was this Curley guy important?”
“Not to this story. But he regularly raised a ruckus in Warner Pier.”
“How? Was he an unpopular mayor?”
Joe chuckled. “He wasn’t a mayor at all. M-e-y-e-r was his first name. Pronounced like the title of a city official. ‘Mayor.’ Anyway, he lived not far from the Country Convenience Store, maybe a mile farther south on Lake Shore Drive. He had curly hair, and he didn’t like to be teased about it, so he shaved his head. He was one of those people who get up at every meeting and start out, ‘I object.’ No matter what other people wanted to do, he objected.”
“So people noticed when he died? Was it natural causes?”
“Oh yes. He’d had heart surgery, and the cardiologist told him he had to walk every day, or else. So, every night after dinner ol’ Curley collected his flashlight and took a walk.” Joe shook his head. “The joke was that everybody except his wife and his doctor knew that he was walking to the convenience store to get a large-sized Hershey bar.”
Hogan gave a deep sigh. “One of those, huh?”
“Right. So his death wasn’t unexpected. But even though the death was perfectly natural, it got a lot more attention than some teenage prank. If you want to know the exact date, it should be easy to find in the Gazette files.”
“I’ll check the records,” Hogan said. “I don’t like it when stray pistols turn up in my bailiwick.”
Joe chuckled. “Wherever the gun in the Bailey house came from, it had nothing to do with Curley. He had a heart attack. I suppose the gun might link to the prank holdup in some way. But it seems more likely to me that it was a pistol the Baileys had and for some reason they forgot it when they moved out.”
“When were you going to call the Bailey girl about the gun?”
“I didn’t know I was until I just heard Lee mention it. But Twyla McDonald—that’s her married name—she lives on the West Coast now. I can call her as soon as I find her number. It’s still early out there.”
“Let me know what she says, please. And, Lee?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m going to run out to the Bailey house tomorrow morning. I might ask you to show me where you found the gun.”
“Fine. I’m off until noon. I’ll be around.”
We both hung up then, but Hogan’s questions had given me something to think about. “Joe, what happened to all the Sharks?”
“Oh, they went their separate ways. I’m not sure I know where all of them are now. I think Chip Brown became an electrician. He may be in the Detroit area.”
“And Digger wasn’t a member of the gang?”
“No. Digger was five years younger. The Sharks would have thought he was just a kid.”
“How about Tad Bailey? He’s in the army, right?”
“He went in as soon as he was out of high school. Twyla said he’s in for the long haul. He lives in Oklahoma. And we already talked about Brad Davis. He’s become a big dog.”
“Who were the other two? I’ve already forgotten their names.”
“Sharpy Brock. He went to Michigan State. Got a couple of graduate degrees. I think he teaches in a college someplace.”
“And the other one must have been Spud. Right?”
“Right. The one who threatened to punch me out over buying the Bailey house. But we’re getting the house with no blows exchanged.” Joe frowned. “Now I have a question for you. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to know?”
I thought about the question before I tried to answer.
“I don’t have the slightest idea why I wanted to know,” I said. “Maybe I just wondered if I knew any of the guys. Or maybe it’s just my curiosity bump bothering me, as usual. And now, how about some ice cream?”
Joe did call Twyla McDonald (née Bailey) as soon as we’d finished dessert, but she didn’t answer. And she didn’t return his call that evening. We went to bed still not knowing anything more about how a pistol that Wyatt Earp might have carried managed to appear in the basement of a mid-century modern house in Michigan. In fact, the last words Joe said before he fell asleep were, “I was really sure we got all the junk out of that basement.”
When Hogan showed up the next morning, about an hour after Joe had left for his law office in Holland, I invited him in for a cup of coffee partly so I could ask that question.
“How did an Old West six-shooter wind up in the Baileys’ basement?”
Hogan laughed before he answered. “May I see the pistol?”
I handed him the plastic sack we had stored it in. “It’s just that it looks so historic,” I said. “As if it’s so old it should be in a museum.”
Still chuckling, Hogan took the pistol out of the sack and unwound the towels that covered it. “Yuk!” he said. “The thing’s dirty enough to be a hundred years old.”
Then he examined it. “It’s a Colt Single Action Army pistol,” he said. “People may call it the Peacemaker. They were manufactured beginning in 1873. But it’s not really old.”
“Well, 1873 sounds pretty old to me.”
“This model was so popular that Colt manufactured thousands and thousands of them. They’re still making them today. They’ve always been popular. Even after they weren’t in general use by law enforcement, lots of people wanted one—reenactors, hobbyists, just people who thought it was fun to have a ‘western’ gun. This one has a serial number, which shows that it’s more modern. Not an antique.”
“Oh.” I felt quite let down.
“I’ll ask the National Crime Information Center if they know anything about this particular gun. If it’s been reported stolen, they’ll have a record of that. But there may not be anything in their records.”
“It gave Digger and me quite a start.”
“I’ll bet it did. This model is notorious for going off unexpectedly. The old-time lawmen kept an empty chamber under the hammer for that very reason.”
Hogan tucked the pistol back into its plastic sack. “Whenever you’re ready I’ll get you to show me where you were when the thing went off.”
We walked over to the Bailey house, chatting idly about the problems of flipping it. We unlocked the front door and went through the house and down the basement stairs. Nothing had been moved or changed since Joe and I had been there the evening before.
I showed Hogan where Digger’s ladder had been and where I’d been standing when the bullet whizzed past. He carefully examined the chip in the basement wall, but he didn’t seem too impressed. No pictures were taken, no comments were made about calling the crime lab.
In fact, after we’d hashed and rehashed the episode thoroughly, Hogan seemed ready to go back to his office. But he headed for the house’s kitchen door, not the front door we had entered.
“I’m going to take a minute to check out that carport,” he said.
“I know you and Joe want to tear those cupboards out.”
“Has Joe said how hard that would be?”
“Not to me.”
“As long as we’re here, I’ll take a look at them.”
I followed Hogan out the kitchen door, which opened into the carport. And I was hit by an odor, a smell that was powerful and unmistakable.
“Oh, ye gods! There’s something dead out here.” I cupped my hand over my nose and mouth. “Yuk!”
“I’ll check it out,” Hogan said. “I see the flies—whatever it is, it’s in that back cupboard. You stay here.”
I wasn’t even tempted to follow him as he crossed the carport. Now I remembered being aware of a slight but unpleasant aroma as we approached the front door of the house. But this was impossible to ignore.
Hogan opened the door of the cupboard and turned on the light inside. He stood silently for a long moment before he spoke. “Lee, why don’t you just go back to your house?”
“Why?”
“Because there’s a body in here, and I don’t think you need to look at it.”