The Case of the Petrified Man (11 page)

“What is a ‘Mahog Whatnot’?” I asked.

Gussie pointed to a kind of triangular table that fit neatly into one corner of the parlor. It had three shelves & was made of dark polished wood.

“That is a Whatnot,” she said. “And I guess ‘Mahog’ is short for mahogany.”

“That is a kind of wood,” said Big Mouth Annie. “Expensive, like black walnut.”

I said, “So Zoe Brown inherited all Sally’s property?”

“No idea,” said Big Gussie, tapping ash into a little silver ashtray. “You have to ask Zoe.”

I made a note of that.

I said, “Was her jewelry stolen? I noticed there was no jewelry on the list of items to be auctioned.”

Honey Pie—the plump one—looked up from the newspaper. “He’s right,” she said. “Sally had that topaz necklace and some pearls, too.”

Spring Chicken removed her thumb from her mouth. “And a real tortoiseshell hair comb,” she said. “That ain’t mentioned neither.”

“You’d best ask Zoe about the missing jewelry, too,” said Big Gussie.

I said, “Where can I find this Zoe Brown?”

“Zoe lives down there at Number Thirty,” said Honey Pie. “Little white crib with a red door.”

Big Gussie tipped her head to one side and regarded me with an expression I could not read. “I thought you would of knowed that. Warn’t she the one who hired you?”

“I cannot tell you who hired me, but thank you very much for the coffee and the information,” I said politely. I closed my Detective Notebook & stood up.

“You ain’t going yet, are you?” rasped Big Gussie, and her eyebrows went up. “Don’t you want to hear how I found the body?”

I sat down again. “Yes,” I said. “Please tell me how you found the body.”

BIG GUSSIE TOOK
a deep pull of her cigarrito. “Short Sally used to board here,” she said. “Breakfast and dinner. Like I told you.”

“Why?” I asked.

Big Gussie shrugged. “No kitchens in them little cribs. Anyways, Sally was high class. Exclusive. Expensive. She usually only entertained one man per night. She would give them her undivided attention. She served them pastries, along with rum or brandy. She would sing and tell stories and be charming. They paid her ten dollars for the night.”

“Ten dollars?” I said. That was a lot of money.

“Yes,” said Gussie, taking another drag. “She had
to pay for the spiritous liquors and sweets herself, but even so, she was doing very well. Recently she bought that team of horses and the gig.”

“Sissy and Sassy,” said Big Mouth Annie.

“Those were the names of the horses,” said Spring Chicken, without taking her thumb from her mouth.

“She kept them up at the Flora Temple Livery Stable,” said Honey Pie.

“She was going to drive that team over the mountains to San Francisco before the winter snows,” said Big Mouth Annie. “It was her dream.”

“Not a very practical dream,” said Gussie. “It takes about four days with your own gig and those steep mountains tire out the horses something awful. Plus there’s the ferry from Sacramento. Sally would have done better to sell the gig and team and buy passage on a stagecoach.”

Honey Pie said, “She told me once she had a vision of driving that pretty white pair right into Frisco and everybody would stare at her all admiring like.”

“We all have our dreams,” said Big Mouth Annie. “Don’t mean they’ll ever come true.”

“After Sally stopped taking her meals here,” said Gussie, “she had a Chinaman deliver breakfast every morning along with her wood. I heard she started dining up at Barnum’s Restaurant and brought the leftovers back to Martha. So we had not seen her in a while. Only sometimes driving by in that new gig of hers, with or without Martha.”

Big Gussie stubbed out her cigarrito & continued her account. “Saturday morning early, the Chinaman banged at my
door. He said he had brought the breakfast and wood as usual but the door was open and Martha was nowhar and Miss Sally would not stir from bed. So I went over there. Sure enough, the front door was ajar. So I went on in.”

“I heard Gussie scream,” said Big Mouth Annie. “It was horrible. Made my blood run cold as snowmelt.”

Big Gussie said, “Poor Sal was stone dead, staring bug-eyed at the ceiling with her mouth open. She was real beautiful but she did not make a good-looking corpse.” Gussie stared at the table for a moment and then gave herself a little shake. “Course once I closed her eyes and tied her jaw shut with a handkerchief she looked more peaceful.”

“At first, we thought Martha might of done it,” said Big Mouth Annie.

“Because she didn’t come to us for help or nothing, just run off…,” said Irish Rose.

“Li’l Martha was her slave girl,” said Honey Pie.

“She warn’t no slave girl,” said Big Mouth Annie. “You ain’t allowed no slaves in the Territory. That’s why she came here. She told me that once.”

Spring Chicken took her thumb out of her mouth. “That true?”

“Yep,” said Big Mouth Annie. “Short Sally rescued her. Poor little runaway orphan slave girl.”

“Treated her harsh, though,” said Honey Pie.

“Not that harsh.” Irish Rose turned to me. “Made her do chores, like sweeping the crib every morning till it was speckless. But sometimes Sal took her for rides in the gig. Wish someone would take me for a ride.”

“Anyhow,” said Big Gussie. “It wasn’t little Martha that strangled Sally. That little gal wouldn’t hurt a fly. Plus Doc Green said the marks on Sally’s neck showed it must of been a man. I reckon Martha saw him do the deed and skedaddled.”

I said, “Doc Green saw the body?”

“Yes,” said Gussie. “He comes round to see us regular. He said she must have been kilt the night before I found her, because she was cold as yesterday’s porridge. But none of us heard any noise, did we?” She looked round at her Girls. They all shook their heads & stared at the table.

“Where does Doc Green live?” I asked.

“South D Street.” Gussie sipped her coffee. “Other side of the church. He told us it would all come out at the inquest,” she said.

I said, “What did the Coroner say when you told him this? Or the Marshal?”

Big Gussie looked at the girls, then at me. “Nobody ever asked us,” she said. “They never held no investigation nor inquest.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Gussie shrugged. “Last week we was ‘between’ Coroners. The Marshal was sick and that Deputy Marshal don’t like our kind. He is often tight.”

“That old Coroner was usually tight, too,” said Big Mouth Annie. “Better no inquest than one by him.”

“What is ‘tight’?” I asked.

“Means ‘drunk,’” she replied.

“The new Coroner ain’t much better,” said Gussie. “I had
words with him t’other day and find him to be a son of a—” She looked at me and caught herself just in time. “Well, he ain’t a kindly man. So I, for one, am mighty glad to have someone fighting on our side.” Here Gussie lifted her coffee cup towards me in a toast. “Even if it is just a pint-sized Private Eye like P.K. here. If ever you need anything,” she added, “you just call on Big Gussie and her gals. We will be there for you.”

I thanked her and the four girls & stood up & put my hat on my head.

Back outside I saw that the sun was dropping down towards Mount Davidson. I judged it to be a quarter past 4 o’clock. I turned right & found Zoe Brown’s crib with no trouble.

It was one of the nicer ones: not too crooked, with a cherry-red door & the No. 30 painted on it.

I knocked on that door.

There was no reply at first but then I saw a curtain twitch & a few moments later the door opened up.

I guessed Mrs. Zoe Brown had some Negro blood. She had big brown eyes with long eyelashes. Her skin was the color of milky coffee. Her dark hair was soft & curly. Her features were very symmetrical & she smelled like honeysuckle.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a pleasant accent that I recognized as Southern.

“My name is P.K. Pinkerton,” I said. “I am a Private Eye investigating the brutal Murder of Sally Sampson. Will you help me?”

“You’re investigating Sally’s murder? Why, you’re just a
child.” She was wearing a brown & white calico dress that was faded but clean. It had a lacy cream-colored collar and cuffs.

“I am twelve years old,” I said. “I am just small for my age.”

She gave a quick glance over her shoulder towards someone in the room behind her. I could not see who it was. “I have company at the moment,” she said, “but he is going soon. Can you wait?”

I said that I would wait.

I went and stood across the street in the shadows behind a barrel at the back of a saloon that had its main entrance up on C Street. I took some antelope jerky from my pocket because I had only eaten some cheese & crackers for lunch.

While I chewed the jerky, I opened my notebook and added some suspects:

After a while the cherry-red door opened and a man came out.

He was a man known to me.

It was Mr. Isaiah Coffin, my neighbor, the photographer.

He was also Suspect No. 6 on my list.

I waited until Isaiah Coffin was out of sight & then ran up to the red door with the No. 30 & pounded hard.

Would I find the beautiful Zoe Brown lying strangulated in her crib & staring bug-eyed at the ceiling with her mouth open?

WHEN MRS. ZOE BROWN
opened the door her eyes
were
staring a little, but I reckon that was because of my urgent knocking.

“Oh, it is you,” she said, and darted glances up and down the street. “I am sorry but I am so nervous since Sally got killed…Do please come in,” she added in her Southern accent.

Zoe Brown’s crib was the same layout as Sally’s & almost as bare. Instead of a Brussels Carpet, there were only raw planks. Instead of plaster, the walls were “papered” with cotton flour sacks all stitched together & stuck up in rows. Instead of lace curtains, hung more flour
sacks. The only furniture was a narrow bed, a sagging couch, a potbelly stove & a traveling trunk being used as a table. Her being so pretty, I was surprised that she did not have lots of nice vases & doilies & mahog whatnots like Big Gussie.

And yet there was a hat rack along one wall with about six of the fanciest hats I had ever seen.

I deduced from this that she spent all her money on hats.

I could smell coffee. I also caught a whiff of Isaiah Coffin’s tobacco. He smoked St. James Blend in his meerschaum pipe. I noticed a few shreds of tobacco on the plank floor.

I said, “In the newspaper it names you as Mrs. Zoe Brown. Are you married?”

“I am a widow,” said Mrs. Zoe Brown in her softly accented voice. “I live alone.”

I nodded. Back in Dayton there were some women who called themselves “Mrs.” so as to seem more respectable.

She poured me a cup of coffee, then gestured for me to sit on the couch. “Have you found out anything about who might of killed poor Sally?” she asked.

I said, “I have just been to Big Gussie’s and the girls told me that Sally had lots of jewelry. But the Notice of Auction does not list a single piece. Do you think Sally might have come home that night and startled a thief and he strangled her to silence her? Maybe that was the motive.”

“No,” said Zoe Brown. “Sally sold all her jewelry a month ago so’s she could buy that sweet buggy and pair of horses. She had little at home for a thief to take.”

“If the motive was not robbery,” I said, “then do you have any notion of why she was killed?”

“She chose a dangerous profession,” said Zoe Brown. “Men easily get drunk or jealous or angry. But there was something about Sally that made it more likely that she’d get herself hurt. Her tongue was as tart as an acidulated drop. I did warn her…”