15: Troubled Times, by Cadlin

MURDER AND MAYHEM AT CHERRY CREEK

EPISODE

15

BY: CADLIN

 

 

Troubled Times

 

 

        From his desk inside the store front building of The Cherry Creek Times, Eldridge Trotter could swivel around, look over the counter and out a large plate glass window. From here he had a framed view of the County Courthouse set amid the large sycamore trees and lawns of the town square. By walking around the counter to the window, he had a view of the better part of what passed for a downtown.

        Immediately on the right was Miss Dolly's Pale Rider Saloon and Steak House. On the left a weed growing, paper catching lot separated the Times from the Woolworth's five-and-dime store. The location suited Trotter. The coffee klatch of local businessmen and city officers met each early morning in the well lighted dinning room at the Pale Rider. Lunch was fast and easy at the counter in Woolworth's. A whiskey or two and dinner were back at the Pale Rider. Then home and bed were one story up over top of the Times.

        This had been his daily routine for most of the forty years he had owned and edited the weekly newspaper. 

        Sitting at the desk this morning, his sparse, lanky frame and wispy white hair belied last nights troubled sleep. Although he appeared as relaxed and casually preoccupied as ever, there was nothing casual about the troubles that nagged his mind.

        That dead body, he thought. Probably just a simple drowning. Wouldn't be the first time a tramp drained one too many bottles of Thunderbird and stumbled into a pond for a swim. But, he thought--but?

        Sheriff Wallace was at the coffee klatch this morning. Fact is, Wallace got stuck for the tab and was about half angry over it. He only makes it once, sometimes twice a week and damned if it doesn't seem he always gets stuck paying. But then, as a boy Wallace had seemed to always be the "out goes you" in eenie-menie-mynie-moe.

        The system for determining who picked-up the coffee tab each morning was as simple as that old childhood game. Whoever paid the day before would write a number from one to a hundred on a napkin. Then one at a time, each person would pick a number. After each pick, the writer would announce the choice as high or low.  The idea being to close in on the number but not hit on it. Eventually, the highs and lows got closed down to where someone had to step on the number and buy the coffee.

        Something must have been eating at the Sheriff this morning. It wasn't like him to come so near blowing his top over a little thing like a coffee tab. He'd as much as accused everyone of somehow setting him up so that he always got stuck with the bill. And of course that stupid faced Cadlin sitting there looking as comically innocent and ignorant as he was sly all but proved the Sheriff's suspicion. In truth, there wasn't any kind of fix in the game, at least none that Trotter knew about. And he knew pretty much all the fixes in the town along with what closets they were hid in. 

        Cops, Trotter thought. They're all the same. They can't stand not being in control, and games of chance just drive them nuts.

        This morning the Sheriff mentioned that the drowned man was a federal matter since it happened on public lands. That was odd. Sheriff Wallace had never let public or private ownership stop him before. This was his county.

        The prospect of federal officers is what kept eating at the corners of Trotter's thoughts this morning. So long as it was just the BLM Rangers, there was nothing much to worry about, Trotter kept telling himself. But there was something in the way the Sheriff had intoned the word "federal" with a nod and a wink that portended FBI, although he never said as much.

        Ancient history, Trotter kept telling himself. Hell, the records probably didn't even exist anymore. Not since that massive warehouse of old army records had burned down back east a dozen years ago. Half the veterans in town had to dig out their old discharge papers to reestablish their benefits.

        And what if the Bureau did send out a special agent or two? What would they find? A dead body drowned in a pond, and probably a drunk tramp to boot.

        Trotter glanced at his wrist watch. Five minutes of noon. Elaine would be making his tuna fish on rye over at the Five-and-Dime. "Lunch time," he announced to the room at large, then stepped outside and turned left.