Chapter Six
My ma, she always used to say, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Some smart Pennsylvanian named Franklin was responsible for that, according to her. Me, I’ve been an early riser from the get-go, but I sure didn’t get wealthy or wise from it. The real good thing about early rising is that I can get out to the crapper behind Belle’s Boarding House before a line forms when the sun comes up. There’s nothing worse than getting up and waiting in line to use the biffy. The seat’s frosty, and there’s nothing worse than settling down on some cold wood, but that’s the price paid by the early bird.
Zoroaster Zimmer, he’s an early riser, too. I hardly got into my office and cleaned up the puke of the drunks in the jail before he showed up and wanted me to solve the burglary.
“That’s the life and death of my show, sheriff. I can’t pay my cast when there’s nothing in the till.”
“We’re working on it,” I said, which was a stretch. All we’d done is ask the barkeeps to tell us about big spenders.
“I’m expecting you to find the culprit before we leave.”
“How much time we got?”
“Tomorrow. We’ll have our grand finale tonight and roll out.”
“So we’re supposed to catch this crook, collect what you lost, and put it back in your britches before then?”
“I insist on it. This has been a terrible ordeal. We haven’t sold many bottles of the elixir. We’re not drawing crowds. Doubtful is very doubtful.”
“You got yourself a new padlock at the hardware?”
“No, I can’t afford one, sheriff. I’m putting our paltry cash in with my chemicals. I have another, larger lock cabinet, with my tinctures and bottles and secret miraculous ingredients.”
“You want to give me the old lock, doc? My friend George Waller, the hardware man, thinks maybe he can tell whether the padlock was sawn through with a coarse blade or a fine one, and we’ll look for hacksaws with the right blade on them.”
“No, no, no, sheriff. We’ll buy a replacement in a large town, where we have a choice.”
“Well, just leave it behind and we’ll maybe figure out a thing or two.”
“I commend you for your diligence, sir, but that’s not going to put a crook in your little jail, is it?”
“Well, professor, I’ve put my best man on it, Rusty, and he’ll maybe nab someone.”
“He’s the lovelorn groom?”
“That’s him.”
“If you find those Ukrainians, let them know I’d be glad to hire them for my show. It’s a good life. They’d get a nice salary between them, and I’d build a special bunk in the wagon, and they’d get to see the country.”
“They’re plumb gone, professor.”
“A pity,” Zimmer said. He clamped his black silk stovepipe hat over his graying locks, and beat it. He’d do his first show after lunch, and another late afternoon, and the big show in the evening. The lunch show got the women out, and he pitched his elixir for female complaints and vapors. The night show, that was for cowboys, so he pitched his elixir for virility. But that just meant the old men in town lined up for a bottle or two.
I wandered over there to his camp on the edge of town, just to see him give another of them stem-winders. There sure were a mess of women there. I didn’t know we had so many women, of all shapes and sizes and ages. And there was Zimmer, silk stovepipe hat, swallowtail coat, holding a bottle of his magic potion in hand.
“Ladies, this is your last chance. I implore you, buy while you can. Don’t suffer regrets that you failed to purchase not one, but six, bottles of my elixir. Remember this: My elixir regulates female cycles and improves health. Are you worn down? Zimmer’s Tonic will lift the aching heart, bring up the chin, brighten the eye. Are you weary of childbearing? Take Zimmer’s Tonic each morning, and you will see magical results. Do you yearn for more children, or the attentions of your handsome and gifted husband? Why, take a double dose, two teaspoons, late in the evening, and your smile will radiate through the whole room, and win smiles from your happy mate. Do you hurt? Are you melancholic, at times? Zimmer’s Tonic does wonders for the spirit. Now, as my parting offer, I am going to give you the bargain of a lifetime: two bottles for the price of one. Two bottles for two dollars cash. You’ll have one for the future, or one to share with your husband when he’s worn down. Just two dollars buys you a cornucopia of joy.”
The women looked undecided. Some had parasols, and twirled them in the warm spring sun. They were consulting, weighing, hesitant. But then a woman Cotton hadn’t seen before laughed and said, “Save two for me!”
He looked closer; it was the grass-skirt lady in the show, but all dolled up in a blue dress and bonnet. She pushed forward, waving two greenbacks, scooped up two bottles from one of the teamsters who took her cash, and strutted off. That sure started it. A mess of them ladies lined up, pulled dollars out of their reticules and pockets, and began snapping up all that stuff in the green bottles.
Zimmer smiled and waved his accordionist up to the stage, and pretty quick the feller was pounding out a jig, while the ladies snapped up bottles.
I spotted Rusty coming at me like a clipper ship, and he waved me aside.
“We got trouble. George Waller’s says he’s been robbed.”
“What? When?”
“A whole list of stuff. He’s still trying to figure it all out. He took some shipments two days ago, and now stuff’s gone and no one in the mercantile sold it.”
“Burgled or robbed?”
“He says the store’s been locked tight at night, but someone’s sneaking stuff out when no one’s looking. He says arrest all these medicine people.”
“He got any proof?”
“He says they’re here in Doubtful, and that’s all he needs.”
I hurried over there, only to run into Hubert Sanders, who owns the Merchant and Stockmen’s Bank.
“Little problem, sheriff. My tellers tell me there’s cash missing. We’re doing an audit; seems someone opened the cash drawers and made off with coin and greenbacks, when no one was looking. It’s impossible; my people are always alert. But someone did it.”
This was getting serious.
“George Waller’s got some trouble, too. I’ll put Rusty on that, and I’ll see what’s happening at the bank. When did you find out?”
“It’s three o’clock, closing time, and my tellers, they’re counting the cash, and something’s haywire in two cash drawers.”
“Hardly seems likely a light-finger thief would go into your drawers, Hubert.”
“If you’re insinuating that one of my tellers did it, then we need a new sheriff,” he said.
I’d heard that sort of sentiment pretty near once a week in Doubtful. But I still had a job.
We rushed up those sandstone steps into the bank, and the clerks were waiting.
“Drawer A is lacking forty dollars and twenty-five cents. Drawer C is lacking seventeen dollars and two cents, sir. We’ve double-checked, and it’s clear someone nipped cash, maybe when one or another of us was at lunch or occupied.”
“But it’s all in plain sight. I see every person coming in and going out.” He turned to me. “It’s the medicine show.”
“They’re having some trouble, too, Hubert. Zimmer lost every cent he had, his strongbox opened up.”
“Huh,” Sanders said. “Do you believe it?”
“I’m checking it all out.”
“What have you done?”
“Talked to Zimmer’s people, and asked all the barkeeps in town to tell me about big spenders.”
“Sherlock Holmes you definitely are not,” Sanders said. “Get that money; solve this, or else quit.”
I talked a little with those two tellers, McAffee and Barnes, trying to get some handle on when it happened, and when those two weren’t in their teller cages. And trying to figure how someone could reach through the teller window, open the cash drawer, scoop up some money, and slide the door closed without being spotted. From the sound of it, the best time was around the lunch hour, when Sanders was gone and one or another teller was gone, leaving just one man in the bank. But both men swore they were constantly vigilant. And neither saw anyone, male or female, from the medicine show lingering around the place.
They enacted how it had to happen, with McAffee acting the part of the thief, reaching through the window when no one was around, sliding the drawer away from him, nipping some money, and sliding the door closed. That accounted for one window, but two? It sure was a head-scratcher, I thought.
“All right, you fellers think of anything else, you get ahold of me or Rusty. I gotta talk to George Waller. He says his store’s been hit.”
“Him, too?” Barnes asked.
“So he says. He says the medicine show people did it.”
I found Waller and his clerk, Gasper, along with Rusty, in the gloomy mercantile. There sure wasn’t much light in there. I’d hate to spend the day in a place with just a little window light coming in, and heaps of merchandise everywhere, but hard to see. If someone was nipping stuff from the store, it wouldn’t be hard in a place like that.
“George, what you need is some of them skylights in the roof. Maybe this wouldn’t happen if you let some light in here,” I said.
Waller glared. It was a fire-the-sheriff glare, and I’d seen it a few times. But I was right, so I thought I’d rub it in.
“Women, they come here for cloth, and the first thing they do is haul it to the front of the store so they can see what they’re buying.”
“I’ve just been robbed, and you tell me how to run my store.”
“Yep, maybe the two fit together. Dim store, no one sees the nipper.”
“Blame the victim!”
“Maybe you need some blaming, George. But I’ll check this out, and if you got a list of stuff that got took, I’ll head over to them medicine show wagons and turn the outfit inside out, and if I find any of your stuff there, they’ll all end up in my little iron-caged hospitality house.”
That lowered the boiler pressure a little.
He was missing some ready-made skirts, women’s stockings, men’s underdrawers, a box of candles, a jug of lamp oil, some ready-made wire-rimmed spectacles, some bars of Fels-Naptha soap, four horseshoes and a box of shoeing nails, a carton of saltine crackers, a bottle of dill pickles, and a red blanket.
“Probably more. It’s hard to keep track,” Waller said.
“All right, me and Rusty, we’ll head for the medicine show and have a look.”
“You won’t find a thing,” Waller said. “They’re too smart for that.”
“If they got it cached, we’ll find the cache,” I said.
Nothing but trouble now in Doubtful.