The Sheriff slouched out of the house half an hour later, shaking his dusty head. “Poor Mr. Simmons, his head is all rucked in like the skin of a rusted potbelly stove.”
“Oh?” I asked.
The Sheriff flickered a mean yellow glance at me, switching his mustache around on his thin upper lip, balancing it. “You damn right it is.”
“A murder mystery, hunh?” I asked.
“I won’t say it’s a mystery,” said the Sheriff.
“You know who done it?” I asked.
“Not exactly, and shut up,” snapped the Sheriff, thumb-rolling a cigarette; and sucked it into half ash with his first flame. “I’m thinking.”
“Can I help?” I asked.
“You,” snorted the Sheriff, looking up at me on top of my mountain of bones and body, “help? Ha!”
Everybody laughed, holding rib bones like bundles of breathing sticks and blowing out cheeks and glittering their sharp shiny eyes. Me help, that was sure something to tickle.
Mr. Crockwell, he was the farmer man, he laughed, and Mr. Willis, he was the hardware-store man and tough as a rail spike, he laughed like tapping a sledge on a beam iron, and Mr. Duffy’
s Irish bartender laugh made his tongue jig around pink in his mouth; and Jamie MacHugh, who would run away if you yelled boo, he laughed too.
“I been reading Sherlock Holmes,” I said.
The Sheriff raked me over. “Since when you reading?”
“I can read, never mind,” I said.
“Think you can solve mysteries, eh?” cried the Sheriff. “Get the hell away afore I boot the big rump off you!”
“Leave him be, Sheriff,” laughed Jamie MacHugh, waving one hand. He clicked his tongue at me. “You’re a first-rate sleuth, ain’t you, Peter?”
I blinked at him six times.
“Sleuth, detective, Sherlock Holmes, I mean,” said Jamie MacHugh.
“Oh,” I said.
“Why, why-high,” laughed Jamie MacHugh, “I’d bet my money on big Peter here any day, ann-eee day! Strong, strapping lad, Sheriff. He could solve this case with one shuffle of his big left shoe, couldn’t he, men?”
Mr. Crockwell winked at Mr. Willis and Mr. Willis tonked a laugh out like cleaning your pipe on a flat stone, and everybody shot little sly glances at the Sheriff, nudging one another’s ribs and chuckling.
“Sure, I’d bet good money any autumn on Peter there. Here’s fifty cents says Peter can solve the case afore the Sheriff!” said Jamie.
“Now, look here!” bellowed the Sheriff, standing stiff.
“Here’s seventy cents says the same,” drawled Mr. Willis.
And here came round money silver shining, and green money like little wings flapping on their hairy hands.
The Sheriff kicked a boot angrily. “Odd dammit. No feeble-minded giant can solve any murder case with me around!”
Jamie MacHugh tilted back and forth on his heels. “Scared?”
“Hell’s gate, no! But you’re all riding my goat!”
“We mean it. Here’s our money, Sheriff; you meeting it?”