The Case of the Murdered Muckraker (24 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

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“No more is Mrs. Simmons. But Miss Coleman's been telling me how you helped her navigate through the mountains. Now I gotta admit, I never flew across the Rockies. Miss Coleman's gonna take me up for some stunts while she's here. Before Mrs. Simmons comes home,” he added with a wink.
They turned to look at Bessie, to find her standing quite still, staring into the northern sky. “There's a plane coming,” she said. Squinting against the glare, Daisy made out a distant dot. Everyone fell silent, and a faint buzz came to her ears. “Sounds like it's a DH-4,” said Bessie. “That's what the post office flies.”
Dipper swung up his binoculars. “It is. That's him.”
“Everyone under cover,” snapped Chief Judkins. His men herded them into the building.
All except Alec, who stayed outside conferring with Judkins, to Daisy's dismay. The two officers joined them, then all four moved out of sight.
Daisy was on tenterhooks. Dipper was indignant. “Dash it!” he exclaimed, standing behind her at the window, “I could have helped if they'd just told me what to do.”
“Me too,” said Haycox.
“Don't go out now, for heaven's sake,” said Daisy. “If Pitt sees people around he might decide not to land. Or you might put Alec and the others in danger.”
For what seemed an age, nothing happened. Then the drone of the approaching plane penetrated the walls. It grew louder, and suddenly the biplane appeared, a few feet above the grass, crossing in front of the building. The post office insignia was plain on its side. It really was the pirated aeroplane. Daisy exhaled on a long sigh. She had not quite believed it until that moment.
The wheels touched down, bounced, settled again. As the plane slowed, the tail came down and the skid slid across the grass. Just before the plane moved out of Daisy's field of view, the pilot turned his head for a quick glance behind him.
That was when she realized there was no figure sitting in the rear with the mailbag.
Where was Pitt? If he had abandoned ship before reaching Eugene, why had the pilot come here? Was it a different aeroplane after all, perhaps the first of a new air mail service to Oregon?
Where was Wilbur Pitt?
The plane taxied back into view, close enough for the engine noise to make the window panes vibrate. It stopped on the tarmac. Silence came as a shock. The pilot clambered down with what looked like weary haste, and started towards the building at a lumbering run.
As one, Dipper and Haycox moved towards the door, but Alec and Judkins intercepted the pilot. They exchanged a few words. Judkins waved his arms and headed for the plane, while Alec and the pilot came on towards the building.
Daisy was torn between watching what happened outside and going to meet Alec. She stayed at the window long enough to see Judkins and his officers approach the biplane,
crouching beneath the illusory protection of its canvascovered wings. Then she turned away as Alec and the pilot came into the room.
“Let the man sit down,” said Alec as everyone crowded around, babbling questions. “Yes, Pitt's on the plane. He's asleep.”
“And not likely to wake without he's shaken,” said the pilot in a gravelly voice, flopping into a chair and taking off his helmet. He looked badly in need of sleep himself, his eyes red-rimmed, his hands trembling. The urge to tell his story was stronger. “He's stayed awake two nights, holding a gun on me. I didn't sleep too good, I can tell you, and every time I woke up, there he was with his eyes wide open and that goddamn gun pointing at me. He threatened to burn the mail, too. And he talked, boy, did he talk. Say, anything to eat and drink around here?”
“There's usually something in the icebox,” said Simmons, hurrying out.
“What did Pitt talk about?” Daisy asked. All she really wanted to know was whether he had shot Otis Carmody.
“Pitt's his name? He didn't tell me. Mostly he went on about his book. He's written this goddamn—excuse me, ma'am—this book, see, and he quoted me miles and miles of it. Geez, what a load of bull!”
“Here.” Simmons returned, carrying a box and a bottle. “It's not much.” He opened the box to reveal several semi-mummified doughnuts. “And a root beer. I can put on coffee.”
“That'd be dandy, thank you, sir.”
“And I'll take you into town and buy you a good meal soon as Chief Judkins gives the O.K.”
The pilot was already devouring doughnuts before Simmons
finished speaking. He paused only to wash down the crumbs with root beer, whatever that might be. Simmons went off to make coffee; Dipper, Bessie, and Fisher returned to the window; Alec, Daisy, and Haycox stayed with the pilot.
“What else did Pitt say?” Alec asked as the pilot finished off the bottle.
“He was shooting off his mouth about his cousin. Seems he had this cousin born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who was always putting on side. The guy laughed at his book, and that really got his goat, but if it wasn't for the bad blood between 'em going way back, I guess he wouldn't have shot him.”
“He shot his cousin?” Daisy demanded, wanting confirmation but already feeling tension drain from her. Everything she had done, and persuaded other people to do, was justified, after all.
“Yeah, didn't I say? That's why he was on the run. Said he didn't mean to kill him, just show him he was serious and make him stop saying the book was baloney. Only he—the cousin—fell down an elevator shaft and broke his neck. Pitt was sure he did it just to louse him up, like he was always doing when they were kids together. Nutty as a fruitcake, if you ask me.”
“Darling,” said Daisy, turning to Alec, “you'd better go and cable Whitaker and tell him to release poor Lambert!”
Judkins brought Pitt in, looking like a sleepwalker between the two burly officers. He looked harmless enough, and they had not bothered to handcuff him. He was carrying his suitcase, clutched to his chest with both arms.
“It just has a bunch of papers in it,” Judkins said to Alec. He patted his pocket. “I got his gun. Mrs. Fletcher, ma'am,
this is the man you saw kill Otis Carmody?”
Closing her eyes, Daisy took her mind back to the lift lobby and her brief glimpse of a fleeing man's face. When she opened her eyes, that face was in front of her, blinking back at her unseeingly.
“This is the man I saw running away in the Flatiron Building in New York City just after Carmody was killed,” she said with confident precision.
“And he told me he shot his cousin,” the pilot affirmed.
“Well, that about wraps it up,” Judkins said with a sigh of relief.
At that moment, Pitt focussed on Ernest Haycox, busy with pad and pencil. “You're a writer?” he croaked, thrusting the suitcase at him. “Here. Take this. My book. You understand, don'cha? You'll see it gets published?”
“Gosh,” said Daisy as the police led Pitt away, “I think maybe I don't want to write a novel after all!”
E
arl C. Simmons swept into the Hotel Osburn's lobby with Bessie at his side. The day desk clerk opened his mouth—and closed it again. It wasn't for him to question the actions of so notable a citizen. Daisy was not sure she approved of patronizing the place, but Bessie turned and winked at her.
With Alec, Dipper, and Jeffries, the post office pilot, Daisy followed Simmons and Bessie through to the restaurant. Jeffries was soon tucking into a vast plate of eggs, sausages, fried ham, hashed brown potatoes, and toast, while awaiting his order of hot cakes. The others contented themselves with coffee, except Daisy, who, after her early awakening decided it must be time for elevenses. The Danish pastries looked simply too scrumptious to resist.
Dipper, Bessie, and Simmons still had only the sketchiest notion of what had been going on. Alec told the story, with sticky interpolations from Daisy.
“So you see,” he finished, “I was a latecomer to the whole nasty business. Daisy was in it from the start, and I don't suppose the murder or the piracy would ever have
been cleared up if not for her insight and persistence.”
“Gosh, darling, I never thought I'd hear you say that!” Daisy exclaimed, startled. She explained to the others, “Alec generally tells me off for meddling when I get involved in his cases.”
“But this case was yours, honey,” said Bessie, “right from the get-go. A girl's gotta fight for every scrap of credit she's earned. Don't you let anyone do you out of it.”
“She won't,” said Alec, and everyone laughed.
Jeffries finished his last pancake and his fourth cup of coffee. “Oh boy,” he said, leaning back, “that was swell. Thank you, sir. I feel almost human again, fit to get the mail down to San Francisco.”
“What, today?” said Alec.
“‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,'” Daisy quoted.
“I guess they forgot to put piracy in that,” said Jeffries, “but I don't reckon it excuses me for being any later than I can help. I'm off.” He yawned. “Hey, mebbe I better have another cup of coffee first.”
“Miss Coleman and I have a sort of plan,” said Dipper. “I'm going to fly her to New Mexico to join her friends. Apparently San Francisco is on the way. How would it be, old chap, if one of us flew your kite?”
“Now that's a scheme!” Simmons applauded. “I'll drive you over to the airfield.”
Jeffries obviously wasn't keen on entrusting his precious mail to either a woman or a foreigner, but he was too tired to put up much of a fight.
“What about you, Arrow, Mrs. Fletcher?” Dipper asked. “Are you coming with us?”
Alec looked at Daisy. “Whatever you want, love.”
Daisy weighed the terror of flying through the mountains, the boredom, the noise and cold and constant vibration, against the thrill of her first flight and the stupendous scenery she had seen. What tipped the balance was the thought of climbing back into Jake's trousers.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I'm glad to have done it, but if it's all the same to you, darling, I'm going back by train.”
A number of real people have sneaked into this story. Needless to say, their activities herein, inspired by meeting Daisy, are entirely imaginary.
The Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries
 
 
Death at Wentwater Court
The Winter Garden Mystery
Requiem for a Mezzo
Murder on the Flying Scotsman
Damsel in Distress
Dead in the Water
Styx and Stones
Rattle His Bones
To Davy Jones Below
THE CASE OF THE MURDERED MUCKRAKER. Copyright © 2002 by Carola Dunn. All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
 
 
 
 
eISBN 9781429999977
First eBook Edition : April 2011
 
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dunn, Carola.
The case of the murdered muckraker : a Daisy Dalrymple mystery / Carola Dunn.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-27284-7
1. Dalrymple, Daisy (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. British—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 3. Women journalists—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 5. Honeymoons—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6054.U537 C37 2002
823'.914—dc21
2001048657
First Edition: February 2002

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