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I went back out to the trailer court to check on Maxwell and his menagerie. I found him telling Ledbetter all about our planned outing for the coming Saturday evening.
“I hear you’re all going to see The Music Man,” said Ledbetter. “Maxwell’s been telling me all about it.”
“I have to go,” Maxwell told me. “Watch Earp and Hercules.”
“Go?”
“Number two.”
“Oh, I see.”
Maxwell darted into his jay blue cottage, and I waved to Oliver, who was up on a ladder trying to wrestle a vent pipe into submission at the gable end of Marsha’s cottage next door, before I lowered my voice and said to Ledbetter, “I don’t think the news about Duke has gotten out, yet.”
“That is surprising.”
“Well, the only people up at the mine were law enforcement and search and rescue. You, me, Roberta Bagley, and her sister may be the only ones who know.”
“That won’t last for long.”
“And Julia Throckmorton. I forgot about her. And Hank.”
“That’s too many people to keep a pretty suspicious death quiet for long,” Ledbetter said.
“Not if they all have some compelling reason to keep it quiet.”
“What reason would any of those people have?”
“Roberta Bagley is grieving, and her sister may be respecting her desire to avoid the burden of accepting condolences until the shock has worn off. Besides, she must have realized by now, considering the state Duke’s cabin was in, that he probably didn’t end up down that mineshaft of his own volition.”
Ledbetter conceded that was not an unreasonable conclusion to come to. “What about Julia?”
“Her brother is Jimmy Throckmorton,” I said.
“And?”
“He’s a prime suspect in Duke’s ‘accident’ in my book?”
“Why?”
“There was already bad blood between him and Duke; he had access to a diamond detector to throw down the shaft with Duke’s body, and—”
“And what?”
“Let’s just say I think Jimmy may have had an even more compelling motive.”
“What motive?”
“I’m still putting the pieces together.”
“You think the authorities suspect Jimmy?” Ledbetter asked.
“I have no way of knowing, but it’s entirely possible they are still treating Duke’s death as a tragic accident.”
“Even with the state his cabin was in?”
“I don’t know, but I have a terrible feeling that Duke was already dead when he fell down the mineshaft,” I said. “The map—which I might point out Hank is convinced Jimmy swiped off the counter in the curio shop—was in Duke’s pocket. He had a diamond detector down there with his body. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look like Duke was searching for the Lost Jewels of Ireland and just happened to fall down a mine shaft.”
“Even if that is what happened,” Ledbetter said. “It doesn’t mean it was Jimmy who did it.”
“Think about it: Duke wasn’t known to even have any interest in searching for the Lost Crown Jewels, and Hank swears he didn’t sell him one of those detectors. The only locals Hank says he sold detectors to are Freddy Fernandez, Blake Vance, and Oliver. The only other people with easy access to detectors are Hank, Jimmy, and Rex Popov.”
“And Hank still has his,” Ledbetter pointed out.
“Not that he was ever a suspect.”
“Of course not.”
“What about Rex?”
“Rex has nothing to do with this,” I said. “At least I can’t figure out how he would.”
“How do you know it was one person acting alone?”
“I don’t. If I’m right about Duke already being dead when he was thrown down that mine shaft, then it would have taken two people to get his body into the mine.”
“Not necessarily,” said Ledbetter. “Given time and solitude, one man could drag a body into the mine. Duke was tall, but he wasn’t all that heavy.”
“You’re probably right. It could have been one person acting alone. This whole situation just gets more and more confusing.”
I had several parties who might be able to shed light on the situation if only they were willing to talk to me. I decided to have one last crack at Hank and be absolutely sure that it was just those three locals: Freddy, Blake, and Oliver, who’d bought diamond detectors from him.
When I walked in the door to the Curio Shop, Hank was standing just inside the entrance attempting to convince a midwestern lady tourist of mature years that a piece of Zuni pottery of questionable provenance had been produced by skilled craftswomen using methods passed down through generations rather than in some sweatshop somewhere.
I squeezed around them and prepared to wait Hank’s spiel out. As I wandered through the arched opening that connected the Curio Shop with the Museum of the Unexplained, I noticed that the Chupacabras had been returned to their place of honor in the center of the room.
The display claiming that the Lost Crown Jewels of Ireland were sitting somewhere in the desert just waiting to be found was still present. It had, however, been shoved up against the wall and the metallic gold “diamond detector” had a piece of lined notebook paper taped to the handle, which proclaimed the devices were “on backorder.”
After sending off the midwestern lady tourist with a pot which may or may not have been the genuine article, Hank was all smiles at succeeding in selling off a piece of his wares that had probably been sitting on the shelf for the last decade.
His smile evaporated when I asked him to confirm for certain that he’d only managed to off-load three of his “diamond detectors.”
“I’ve sold a total of twelve,” he said.
“But nine of them were to tourists?”
“That’s what I already told you.”
Hank was being touchy, even by his own standards.
“By the way,” I said. “I don’t think Duke’s death is common knowledge yet, so maybe keep it under your hat.”
“I don’t wear hats,” said Hank.
I fixed him with a firm stare.
“Alright, alright,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, anyway.”
“Have you heard from Rex?” I asked.
“Got a message from his wife. She said Rex wants me to know there’s nothing to worry about; my detectors are currently under production and will be shipping in the next fourteen days.”
“Wife?”
“What’s so weird about Rex having a wife?”
I supposed there was nothing weird about Rex having a wife, but for some reason, I couldn’t quite picture what kind of woman would fancy a man like Rex. She’d have to be as crooked as he was, either that or extremely dimwitted and pathologically trusting.
“Where did Rex’s wife call from?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Didn’t ask.”
“Do you have Rex’s number?” I asked.
“He won’t answer. He’s down the Zambezi.”
“I thought you didn’t believe that story about the Zambezi.”
I could see that Hank was torn between what he knew to be likely true and what he wanted to be true.
“Did Mrs. Popov call the Curio Shop or Phyliss’s phone?”
“She called Phyliss.”