Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary Read online

  Holly says, “Sure,” and before you know it, Penny's down and off on a walk with Holly while the rest of us tag along with Mr. DeVries to the front door.

  Now, if I'd been thinking, I'd have realized that we weren't delivering flowers to a New Year's party. I mean, Lucinda had said something about it not being a party, but she'd been walking two hundred pounds of pork in the middle of the road, so I'd just figured she had a few pickets missing in her little white fence. But after talking to her in the back of the truck, I should have known that the things she said were connected. Definitely connected.

  Mr. DeVries rings the bell, and right away the butler answers the door. He's wearing white gloves and a bow tie, and his eyelids are at half-mast as he says, “Yes?” down his nose at us, but it's hard to take him seriously because planted smack-dab on the tip of his nose is the biggest, reddest, ripest zit I've ever seen. It's like a volcano, ready to erupt.

  The Volcano decides that it would be best for the Mur-docks' white carpet if Mr. DeVries, who's a little bit muddy, and Dot, who's a little bit soggy, carry the plants to the foyer while Marissa and I shuttle them from there into the parlor.

  So we get to work. And I'm carrying a tall ficus plant, not even thinking about Lucinda, who's like my shadow, shuffling alongside me, when we turn into the parlor. And that's when I finally make the connection. And I practically drop my ficus, because down an aisle between rows of padded white folding chairs is a casket. A shiny mahogany casket draped in an enormous cascade of white flowers.

  Marissa's eyes bug way out, and she whispers, “It's a funeral?”

  Lucinda claps her hands lightly and says, “Oh good. He's here.”

  I look at her and ask, “Who is it?”

  “Johnny James Murdock.”

  The Walking Volcano stands to the side of the casket and snaps, “Over here with those.” Then he points and says, “Group them all right here. Miss Murdock wants to place them herself later.”

  Marissa and I deliver our plants, then follow the Volcano around the casket and back up the aisle to the hallway. And when we get to the foyer where Mr. DeVries and Dot are dropping off the next group of plants, I bug my eyes at Dot and whisper, “It's a funeral!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This party…it's a funeral!”

  “You're kidding!”

  The Volcano just stands at attention, twitching his nose like there's sulfur in the air. “You know the way,” he says to us, then waves Dot off to follow her father for the next load.

  Marissa and I take our plants down to the parlor, but when we turn in to the room I practically drop my load again, because the mountain of flowers on the casket has been pushed way to the side.

  And there's Lucinda, standing on a chair by the casket, wrestling open the lid.

  FOUR

  I rush up to Lucinda and say through my teeth, “What are you doing?”

  “I didn't come all this way not to have a few words with him,” she says, then turns back to the casket. “Give me a hand, won't you?”

  Now, I'm not about to help her pop open a casket so she can have a chat with some dead guy, but before I can tell her so, she's done the job herself. She steadies the lid, then gets down from the chair and stands by the casket, looking inside like she's sneaking a peek at a baby in a bassinet. She eyes me. “A moment of privacy, if you please.”

  I don't know what to do. I pull a face at Marissa, who's standing guard at the doorway, and she kicks into hyper-dance. But since Lucinda's staring me down, I back off and watch while she has her little conversation with a corpse.

  Finally, she turns to me and says, “Certainly doesn't look like a murderer, does he, Sammy?”

  I take a few steps closer. “A murderer?”

  She nods, then leans in for a better look. “They did a nice job getting him ready. Normally you don't see so much color in the cheeks.”

  Well, he didn't look too rosy to me. He looked dead. Very old, and very dead. And since I hadn't actually seen anyone inside a casket before, I didn't feel up to analyzing the mortuary's makeup job. I backed away and asked, “Who'd he kill?”

  She gives me a little smile. “Someone very special to me.”

  “So why in the world are you here?”

  She pats her purse. “I was invited.”

  All of a sudden Marissa comes hurrying into the room whispering, “Someone's coming! Quick! Close it! Somebody's coming!”

  Very calmly, Lucinda looks back into the coffin and says, “It's funny. I was expecting to feel something, but I don't. This might as well be a stranger.”

  I'm about to reach up and close the casket myself, but there's no time. A large woman in a black dress and pearls has already come into the room.

  At first, she doesn't notice that anything's wrong, so Marissa and I just put down our plants and head back up the aisle for another load. But then it dawns on her that the casket is sitting there wide open.

  She stops in her tracks, and when we try to go around her she pops her hands on her hips, and there we are, stuck at a human dead end.

  “What is going on here?” she demands.

  “Uh…going on?” We shrug and say, “We're just bringing in the plants you ordered.”

  “That casket didn't fly open all by its lonesome, girls.” She considers Lucinda for a nanosecond, then crosses her arms and glares at us. “What is this? Morbid curiosity? How dare you?” Then she hollers, “Ma! Ma, get in here!” Lucinda shuffles up the aisle and says, “Now hold on there.” “Ma! Ma-a!”

  It seemed weird hearing a woman who had to be at least forty crying for her mother, but she kept right on squawking like a chick in a nest until her mother appeared in the doorway.

  “What in heaven's name is the matter, Dorene?”

  Dorene puts her hands on her hips. “Look what these girls have done!”

  Lucinda shakes her head and says, “I've been trying to tell you, the girls had nothing to do with it.”

  “They…well, then who did?”

  Lucinda gives her a little shrug.

  “You?”

  She nods and says, “I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to reposition things. If you'd like I can—”

  Dorene says, “No! Don't you touch it!” and runs down to do it herself.

  Lucinda says, “Well then, I'd best be on my way.” She shuffles up the aisle past Marissa and me, and it looks like she's going to do-si-do out the door, but Ma blocks her path, saying, “Now wait just a minute. Who are you?”

  Lucinda gives a slight shake of the head. “I'll just be going.”

  Their eyes lock for a moment, and then the mother's jaw drops. “Oh my god.”

  Dorene says, “What, Ma? What?”

  “It's Lucinda.”

  “Lucinda?”

  “Lucinda Huntley.”

  Dorene's eyes bug out, and she pops a pudgy hand over her mouth. “No!”

  “Now don't get your panties in a bunch,” Lucinda says, then snaps open her purse and produces a letter. “I've got an invitation.”

  Ma's face is like stone. “Impossible.”

  “See for yourself.”

  Ma takes the letter and reads. And I can see from where I'm standing that this is not your average time-place-date kind of party invite. It's a full page, handwritten.

  Midway through, Ma's jaw drops. “He apologized?”

  Lucinda nods. “It's a nice gesture, anyway.”

  “A nice gesture? It's insane! How could he ever apologize to you?”

  “I can see that the story that's been passed along to you doesn't exactly paint things in the proper light, but regardless, he didn't do it with much time left, now did he?”

  Ma looks at the upper right-hand corner of the paper. “Why, it's dated the twenty-eighth. That's the day he died…!”

  “So I couldn't exactly come for coffee.”

  “Coffee?”

  Lucinda taps near the bottom of the letter. “Right there. I came today instead, and we had our l
ittle talk. I trust he heard me.” She opens her purse again and says, “Under the circumstances I think it would be proper for me to return this.” She puts a gold pocket watch into Ma's hand and takes back the letter.

  “What is that, Ma?” Dorene practically rips the watch out of her mother's hand. “MVM…who's that?”

  Ma's eyes are locked on Lucinda. “Manny Vernon Murdock.”

  Lucinda snaps her purse closed and says, “And now I'll be going.” She steps around them and heads down the hallway.

  “Wait a minute!” Ma chases after her. “You have a lot of nerve, returning this watch after all these years!”

  Lucinda stops and cocks her head up at her. “Would you prefer I kept it?”

  Ma sputters for a minute, then says, “No! I'd prefer if you'd stay off our property.”

  Lucinda gives her a hint of a smile. “Advice the Murdock clan should've taken years ago. Could've saved a lot of heartache.”

  “Don't you start up with me about that! If you think for one minute you can come in here and place blame on us for the misery you Huntleys have caused…”

  Lucinda scowls at her and mutters, “There's no doubting you're a Murdock.”

  “What was that? You come back here. What was that you said?”

  Lucinda shakes her head. “I'll be on my way.”

  “You'd best be! We don't need the likes of you ruining our funeral!”

  Dorene steps up beside her mother and calls, “Yeah! You think you can do this and get away with it? Wait until I tell my uncle what you've done! Lord knows you'll burn for this!”

  While all this shouting is going on, poor Dot and her dad are standing on the porch with a bunch of plants, looking like they just stepped onto a minefield. I whisper to Dot, “I'm going to get her out of here.”

  “What happened?”

  I shake my head. “That's a very good question.” I check over my shoulder and add, “I'll meet you back at your house.”

  Dot nods. “You know the way, don't you?”

  “Just back down the road to Meadow Lane, right?”

  “See you there.”

  I guide Lucinda past the DeVries' truck, down the drive, past the wagon wheel and the old bent oak, and when we get to the road, there's Holly, walking the pig.

  Holly waves and calls, “Hey!” and as we get closer, she says, “Penny is so smart!”

  Lucinda smiles. “That she is.”

  I say, “We're walking back, you want to come?”

  “You're walking back?”

  I roll my eyes.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, let's see. The party's a funeral. Lucinda here decided to open the coffin and have a chat with the dead guy. She got caught. We got thrown out. You know—just a run-of-the-mill delivery.”

  “Oh, it wasn't that bad.” Lucinda squats down to give Penny a kiss between the eyes. “I'd say they were almost civilized. For Murdocks, anyway.”

  Holly's still processing. “You opened the coffin?”

  Lucinda shrugs. “There are some things one should say face to face.”

  I caught her eye with mine. “And you had something to say to him about him killing someone uh…special to you?”

  Her head bobs a bit. “Among other things.”

  Holly's eyes open a stage further. “Wait a minute…are you saying the dead guy's a murderer?”

  Lucinda reties Penny's bow, then stands with a sigh. “It's a very long story.”

  I look straight at her and say, “We've got a pretty long walk ahead of us.”

  She grins at me. “Not long enough, my dear. This story is generations old.”

  But she starts walking, and as soon as we're in line beside her, she starts talking. “The Murdock clan came over on the same wagon train as my great-grandma Huntley. Her name was Mary, and she had a little boy, Ezekiel, who was ten.”

  Holly says, “So wait, they were pioneers?”

  “That's right. Now at the time, women didn't just join wagon trains without a man, but Mary had lost hers to typhoid. She had nothing but bad memories holding her back, and all those stories of the New Frontier creating an itch to go. So she planned it all out. She spent some savings on a wagon and supplies, cut her hair short, and fashioned a moustache from the clippings. Then she dressed herself as a man and joined up with an emigration party in Independence, Missouri.”

  “No one knew?” Holly asked.

  “Not a soul.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She managed to keep her identity secret for all of five days. The party was being ferried across the Kansas River by Indians when one of them spotted the deception.”

  “One of the Indians?”

  “That's right. And it created such consternation among the Indians that they almost turned on the emigrants.”

  “Why?”

  “It's unclear in the diary, but I believe they thought Mary was an evil spirit.”

  “So she took the moustache off ?”

  Lucinda laughed. “One Lewis K. Murdock ripped it off.”

  “And that's what caused the trouble?”

  “That was only the beginning. Lewis Murdock didn't take kindly to the deception and mounted a campaign to have Mary banned from the wagon train. But Mary told the others that, woman or not, she could and would do the work of two men, and since Ezekiel had already proven himself to be a worthy hand, the party was convinced not to turn them back.

  “Unfortunately, from that day forward the emigrants were plagued by misfortune. Hailstorms, wayward oxen, attacks by unfriendly Indians, broken wagons…and as the bad luck continued, more and more they blamed it on Mary. Moustache Mary they called her, and worked themselves into believing she'd cursed their journey.

  “Then, with supplies diminishing and winter approaching, the families started turning on each other. Stealing from each other. Mary was one of the few with flour left in her barrel, and she found there was someone among them who had no compunctions about dipping in for their own needs.

  “So she assembled the emigrants and made the announcement that she needed what little flour she had left for her boy, who was skin over bones and still working twice as hard as any other lad on the train, and that the next one who stole from her would be adding a bullet to the flour in his belly.” Lucinda stops for a minute to catch her breath. When she starts walking again, she says, “Which is how Lewis K. Murdock met his demise.”

  “She caught him?” Holly asked.

  “Red-handed.”

  “And she shot him?”

  “As promised.”

  Holly and I look at each other and say, “Wow,” and Holly adds, “Welcome to the Wild West!”

  Lucinda nods. “Things were different then, and sometimes, I think, more honest. But for Mary, that's when the real trouble began. You see, Lewis was traveling with his brother, John, and John had with him his wife, Theodosia, and their boy, James. And since James was near grown and as spiteful as his father, Mary lived in fear that she and Ezekiel were more likely to die by the hand of a Murdock than that of an Indian.”

  “But Mary and Ezekiel did make it over, right?” Holly asked.

  “Oh, to be sure. But as fate would have it, they staked out a parcel here, and the Murdocks staked out one— well, you saw it—right up the hill.”

  Holly said, “But why so close to each other?”

  “The Murdocks didn't intend to stay. That was common knowledge. John just wanted to avenge his brother's death—or at least make sure Mary did not prosper—and then move on.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Cholera happened.”

  “Cholera?”

  “People used to die of it all the time. It's a nasty business. Your intestines turn on you. Retch you inside out. It did John Murdock in.”

  I thought a minute and said, “So that left Theodosia and James neighbors with Mary and Ezekiel. Two widows and their sons.”

  She smiled at me. “Just so. But the similarities in their situations
didn't bring the women to an understanding. Theodosia fueled in James the notion that Mary was a curse, and Ezekiel grew up believing that somehow, somewhere, a Murdock was going to get him. Probably in the back.”

  “And?”

  “And as it turns out, the Murdocks prospered, and so did the Huntleys. And the feud might have died out entirely if a certain descendant by the name of Johnny James Murdock hadn't been so easy with a trigger.”

  Holly asks, “So who's Johnny James?”

  I hitch a thumb back up the hill. “The old guy in the coffin.”

  Lucinda gives me a little scowl, but she doesn't say anything. Instead, she points out the wire fencing that starts at a ravine and runs from post to post along the road. “This marks Huntley property. It's been over sixty years since a Murdock's crossed the line, and until I received that letter a few days ago, I thought I'd go to my grave without ever setting foot on Murdock soil again.”

  “So what happened?” I ask. “How was Johnny James easy with a trigger?”

  All of a sudden Lucinda stops. “Well, look at this,” she says, pointing to a gap in the bottom of the fence. “This isn't the proper way to mend a fence.”

  At the gap, there's a four-by-four post, cemented solid into the ground. But the section that meets it is damaged, and isn't long enough to be nailed in place. Instead, it's tacked around a smaller post, which has been connected to the top of the four-by-four with a leather strap.

  Lucinda goes up to the fence, and while she's trying to work the two sections closer together, she says, “Johnny James was easy with a trigger in that he'd shoot at people without thinking things through.”

  “People? As in more than one?”

  Lucinda keeps tugging on the fence. “Oh, sure. Not that he'd hit what he was gunning for. He was too hot headed to be accurate.”

  “But he did hit someone?”

  “In the end? Oh, yes.”