The Huckleberry Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (2 page)

Rose apparently had just got a new hairdo. He preferred
her white, but this short bob with a brown tint did make her look younger. “So what are you up to today, Bo?”

He kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll tell you but I don’t want it blabbed all over town.” He slid into a chair at the kitchen table, pulled the Colt Commander from its shoulder holster, and laid it on the linoleum. Rose hated eating with him when he was armed.

She said, “Heaven forbid I would do such a thing.”

“I mean it, Ma! I tell you about my cases only because you lead such a dull life. In this instance I’m pretty sure I’m dealing with a killer.”

“He murdered someone!” Her eyes lit up. “You know I love murders best, Bo!”

“Yeah, that’s why I’ll tell you. But you better not utter a peep about this to anyone, you understand, or it will be the last murder you hear!”

“Cross my heart.” Rose set a bowl of soup in front of him and a plate of BLT halves in the middle of the table. She had toasted the bread and cut the sandwiches into triangles. Bo sampled a BLT. For all of her hell-raising youth, Rose had somehow managed to become a good cook, at least as far as BLTs were concerned. She was pretty good with Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, too.

“Okay then, here’s the situation, Ma. An elderly rancher disappeared about two years ago. Nobody has heard from him in months except the young fellow running his ranch. The rancher’s ex is sure he’s been murdered.”

Rose was about to bite into her BLT but stopped. “The wife did it!”

“That’s certainly possible. But until I find the body, I can’t be sure he’s been murdered at all. His widow once removed, if she is one, thinks it’s the fellow taking care of the ranch who did Orville in.”

“Orville! You’re talking about Orville Poulson! I know both the Poulsons, Orville and Marge! They’re a wonderful couple! Marge certainly isn’t the kind of person to kill her ex-husband, unless the husband was someone like Pap, and I can assure you he isn’t, or wasn’t, as the case may be. She’s a very nice lady.”

“Let’s leave my father out of this. You’re the one who said the wife did it.” Tully helped himself to another BLT.

Rose sniffed. “That was before I knew we were talking about the Poulsons.”

“Anyway, I don’t have a body and I don’t have a clue where to look for one. That ranch is huge. Orville could be buried anywhere on it.”

Rose sipped her soup, slurped in a noodle, then dabbed her lips with a napkin. “Well, that’s hardly a problem. You just go ask Mrs. Gorsich where the body is.”

“Mrs. Gorsich! You think she did it? At the very least, I should arrest her for telling fortunes without a license.”

“There’s a license for fortune-telling?”

“I don’t know. I guess not. I should put her in jail anyway. Maybe for taking money under false pretenses!” One of his main pleasures in life was to tease his mother.

“False pretenses, my eye! Bo, she’s a real psychic! She taps
into the spirit world and can tell both the past and the future! You go ask her and she’ll tell you where poor Orville is buried.”

“I find Mrs. Gorsich to be more of a physic than a psychic.”

“That’s all you know. Half the businessmen in town won’t make a major decision without consulting Etta first.”

“Why do I find that so easy to believe? Can you imagine what the commissioners would say if I turned in a bill for consulting a fortune-teller?”

“They would be pleased as punch, Bo, to find out the Sheriff’s Department was finally using some common sense to solve crimes.”

“Hmm. Knowing the commissioners as I do, I think you’re probably right about that. Just to satisfy you, I tell you what. I’ll go check out this Mrs. Gorsich.” He pushed his chair away from the table with a sigh. “Anyway, the lunch is perfect. You make a great BLT, Ma.”

“I have many talents, Bo, many talents.”

He nodded at her hair. “Your new do looks terrific, by the way.”

Rose beamed at the compliment. “Makes me look younger, doesn’t it?”

“Oh yeah. Just to warn you, if I see any young bucks hanging around here, I’m going to throw them in jail. Maybe you, too!”

•  •  •

Tully got back to the department shortly after one o’clock. His staff was hard at work, probably because they had heard the
klock-klock
approach of his boot heels on the marble-chip floor. He wasn’t surprised to see his undersheriff, Herb Eliot, still reading the day’s
Blight Bugle,
with an intensity that suggested he was looking for clues to the day’s crimes. How Herb could find so much to read in the paper Tully couldn’t imagine.

The Crime Scene Investigations Unit—Byron “Lurch” Proctor—was bent over his computer in the corner. The corner space was exclusively his. Lurch thought of it as his lab. Tully had given him his nickname, Lurch. Even so, the sheriff was Lurch’s hero. The CSI Unit was possibly the world’s homeliest human being, with dull brown hair that stuck mostly straight up, a nose much too large for his face, rimless glasses half an inch thick perched atop the nose, floppy ears, and beady eyes. But he was brilliant. Besides that, his girlfriend, Sarah, was not only the most gorgeous young woman Tully had ever seen, she was also the smartest, a scientist who worked for a Boise hospital. Tully had begun to think maybe there was something to be said for homely. Oh, yeah, as long as you were brilliant, too.

Daisy Quinn, Bo’s secretary and also a deputy, extremely compact and pretty, with close-cut curly black hair and brown eyes, was a woman who fairly exuded efficiency. Tully had recently made the mistake of having a brief fling with Daisy, a mistake that conceivably could have gotten both him and Daisy fired. Nevertheless, she had helped him over what Tully thought of as a rough patch and he now appreciated Daisy more than ever, even though he tried to make a point of not
showing it. During his absences, he let his undersheriff, Herb, think he ran the department, but Daisy actually was the one in charge. All his deputies knew to take their orders from the secretary. Daisy brooked no nonsense from them.

Tully stuck his head into the radio room and said hi to Flo, his radio person. She gave him her usual big smile. Florence “Flo” Getts was his go-to person whenever Daisy wasn’t available. Undersheriff Herb Eliot was so far down on the list, Tully often forgot about him, even if the department was extremely busy. He had long ago figured out that in any business, institution, or other kind of organization, there was always at least one totally useless person. Usually it was a person high up the organizational chart, if not at the top. He sometimes wondered if headhunters didn’t advertise for totally useless people. This was the position for which Herb was totally qualified.

“Hey, Lurch!” Tully yelled across the briefing room.

Lurch looked up from his computer and gave him a big grin. “Hey, Bo!”

“I’ve got some work for you.” He walked over to the Unit and handed him the piece of paper Crockett had given him. “See if you can find some prints on this—other than mine, that is. If you find any, run them through IAFIS and see if you can find a match.”

“IAFIS” stood for “Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.”

“You got it, Bo. Shouldn’t take long.”

Tully walked over to his glassed-in office. “Daisy, bring your pad. I’ve got some work for you, too.”

She got up from her desk and bustled in. “How did I ever guess?”

“Beats me. You must be psychic. Which reminds me, you know anything about this Etta Gorsich?”

“The fortune-teller? I’ve never met Gorsich but there are people in town who swear by her. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about how she’s contacted dead relatives and come up with messages from them, that sort of thing. Weird stuff. You wouldn’t get me within a thousand yards of that house of hers.”

“Really? I was thinking of sending you over there for a reading, or whatever they call it.”

“No way!”

Tully leaned back in his chair. “What does she look like, Daisy? Skip the part about a pointed black hat and a broom.”

“I’ve never seen her. I don’t think she leaves that creepy house of hers very often. She doesn’t make house calls, as far as I know. You have to go to her if you want whatever she has to sell. I can feel the hair rising on the back of my neck just talking about her.”

Tully smiled. He couldn’t believe a person as sensible as Daisy could be affected by such nonsense. “Well, if you refuse to check her out, I guess maybe I’ll drift over there after work. I had no idea you’re such a chicken, Daisy.”

She laughed. “I’ll be waiting for your report first thing in the morning, Sheriff.”

ETTA GORSICH’S HOUSE sat by itself atop a steep but low hill. It was surrounded by overgrown trees, brush, dried grass, weeds, and dead wildflowers, mostly daisies, dandelions, and thistles. Apparently, the fortune-teller wasn’t big on landscaping. He climbed the steep, rickety wooden stairs leading to the front porch. Tully ignored the two handrails on principle. He thought they were mostly for sissies. The front porch looked as if it had recently been worked on, here and there a new board showing fresh and clean. Tully, already nervous and regretting his decision to check out Mrs. Gorsich, started to knock on the door. It popped open before his knuckles made the first rap.

An attractive middle-aged woman stood there smiling at him. She was in fact one of the better-looking women Tully
had seen in a long while. He instantly regretted jumping back and gasping “Whoa!” at the suddenness of the door springing open. She wore a cream-colored tailored suit on her slim, shapely figure and a necklace of pearls around her elegant neck. Her smile was large and gleamed with both amusement and sparkling white teeth. “Hello,” she said in a husky voice.

“Uh, hello,” Tully managed. “I’m Blight County sheriff Bo Tully and—”

“I know who you are, Sheriff. Everyone in Blight County knows Sheriff Bo Tully. Please come in. I hope you’re not here to investigate the ridiculous rumors that I’m some kind of fortune-teller.”

“Uh,” Tully said.

“Please have a seat over on the sofa, Sheriff. I was just making a pot of tea. Would you like some?”

“Uh,” Tully said again.

“A cup of tea?” the woman said. “Would you like one?”

“Why, thank you,” Tully blurted as if coming out of a coma. “A cup of tea sounds great.”

Mrs. Gorsich disappeared into what Tully assumed was the kitchen. He walked over to the sofa and sat down. The room appeared to be expensively and tastefully decorated. If the lady made her money from fortune-telling, she apparently did very well at it. Tully tapped his finger nervously on his knee and waited for her to return.

Mrs. Gorsich presently came out of the kitchen with a tray containing a silver teapot, two china cups on saucers, two silver teaspoons, a small pitcher of cream, and a crystal bowl
of raw sugar, a tiny spoon sticking out of it. She placed the tray on the coffee table and sat down in a chair across from him. She had excellent posture, her back perfectly straight. He would have to tell his mother about Mrs. Gorsich’s posture. Rose had a thing about posture.

“So, Sheriff, did you bring your handcuffs?”

“Uh, no. No, I didn’t bring any handcuffs.”

“Too bad. It might have been interesting.”

Tully stared at her, his mind now a complete blank.

Mrs. Gorsich laughed. “Only joshing you, Sheriff. I’m sorry. Please tell me why you’re here.” She poured the tea.

Tully put two tiny spoonfuls of raw sugar in his tea, stirred in some cream, and took a long sip, all the time trying to think of why he was there.

“Basically,” he finally said, “I guess I’m here because I try to know all the residents of Blight County, particularly those about whom I hear rumors.”

“ ‘Whom’!” Mrs. Gorsich exclaimed. “Sheriff, you are the first person in Blight County I’ve heard use the word ‘whom’—at least, to do so correctly. You obviously are an educated person.”

“I had a very mean English professor in college, Dr. Agatha Wrenn. We were terrified of her. Learning proper grammar seemed the safest thing to do. If you said ‘snuck’ for ‘sneaked,’ you were taken out behind the language arts building and shot.”

“Maybe that’s why you went into law enforcement after college.”

“It was pretty much expected of me. Men in my family have been Blight County sheriffs for the last hundred years. But I’m here to find out about you, Mrs. Gorsich.”

She refilled his cup. “Etta, please. You mean about my being a fortune-teller?” She laughed. “I admit that many Blight City businessmen come to me for advice about decisions they have to make. They are simple folk for the most part, and I’m sure they think of me as a fortune-teller, particularly when my advice works out for them. I’m actually a financial consultant. I have an MBA from an Ivy League university, the name of which would be too pretentious of me to mention. I worked on the Street for a dozen years and was quite successful at it.”

Tully couldn’t believe she had just confessed to having been a prostitute.

She apparently read the puzzlement on his face. “Wall Street,” she said.

“Oh, right.”

“So, you’re wondering why I ended up here. Well, I didn’t end up here. I may move on at any time, but I’ve become very fond of Idaho. It’s a beautiful state, and the people are nice, and I just have a sense of peace here. Anytime I get bored I fly off to San Francisco or New York, but it’s not long before I come zipping back to Idaho. I have quite a list of clients here I help with investments.”

“I could never leave Idaho,” Tully said. “So I’m not surprised you like it.”

He set his empty teacup back on the tray. He couldn’t remember
having drunk any of the tea. Etta Gorsich picked up the teapot and refilled his cup. There was something about the woman that soaked up his total attention.

“I understand, Sheriff, that you are a very successful artist.”

Tully laughed. “That all depends upon what you mean by ‘very.’ I’ve been painting most of my life and tend to view the world more as a painter than as a sheriff. Only in very recent years have my paintings started to sell. My hope is one day to give up sheriffing and become a poor but otherwise modestly successful full-time artist.”