Gone to Glory Page 12

  The man who’d been batting eyed Traveler silently, while keeping the Louisville Slugger positioned on his shoulder like a sentry holding a rifle.

  “I’m here about Pepper Dalton,” Traveler said.

  As soon as the catcher heard that, he waved in the pitcher, who signaled to the rest of the players the moment he found out what Traveler wanted.

  Once everybody had gathered in front of the backstop, the pitcher said, “I’m Ace Hardin, the acting manager in Pepper’s absence.”

  “I heard you were in Las Vegas,” Traveler told him.

  Hardin snorted. The lines in his weathered face said he wasn’t as young as Traveler had guessed from a distance.

  “You’ve been talking to Bishop Culverwell. With him, it’s once a sinner, always a sinner.”

  “He thinks we’re all lost souls,” the catcher added. “By the way, I’m Fats Cody.”

  “Emmett Culverwell was speaking as sheriff,” Traveler clarified. “Not for the church.”

  Hardin shifted tobacco from one cheek to the other before spitting disgustedly. “There’s no distinction around here. You never know if a sin’s going to get you arrested. Or what qualifies as a sin either, for that matter.”

  The pitcher’s comment prompted laughter and a slap on the back from his catcher. Encouraged, Hardin elaborated. “Take tobacco, for instance. Joe Smith and Brigham Young chewed it themselves in the beginning, you know. It was Smith’s wife who put a stop to it. She got tired of him and his friends spitting on her floor. So she kept after him until he had a revelation. A word to the wise, so to speak.” He nudged his catcher. “The Word of Wisdom, get it?”

  The catcher groaned and spit through his mask, though without aid of tobacco.

  “What’s your connection with Pepper?” Hardin asked before reloading his cheek from a plastic pouch.

  “I’ve been hired by a friend of his to find out what really happened.”

  “He killed his sister in Salt Lake, not here in staid Fillmore.”

  Cody jerked off his mask as if in pursuit of a foul ball. “Wait a minute. Before we tell this guy anything, let’s see some identification.”

  Traveler complied.

  “What a crock of bullshit,” Cody said. “It doesn’t take us a fancy private eye from the big city to know Pepper wouldn’t kill his own sister.” With an umpire’s gesture, he thumbed Traveler on his way.

  “Let’s hear the man out,” Hardin said.

  “He’s no private eye,” one of the other players said—the first baseman, judging by his oversize glove. “I’ve seen him on TV.”

  “Doing what?” Cody wanted to know.

  “Playing ball, I think.”

  “Big league ball?”

  “Must have been. Who else would be on TV?” Hardin glared at Traveler. “Is that right?”

  Now was the time to explain about football, Traveler knew, but he let it pass. “I haven’t played baseball since college.”

  Hardin spit again. “I signed with the Dodgers’ farm system right out of high school myself. That’s where I got the name Ace. They said I always had one up my sleeve because of my curveball.” He stuck a finger in his mouth to rearrange his wad. “That was before my arm went bad on me. Now all I’ve got is a fastball and a knuckler.”

  Cody removed his catcher’s mitt to blow on his hand. “Okay, so the fastball dies off after a couple of innings.” Hardin lobbed tobacco in the general direction of Traveler’s shoes. “I love guys your size. You have big strike zones.”

  “I know I’ve seen him someplace,” the first baseman persisted.

  The catcher snapped his fingers. “Goddamn it, I remember now. Moroni Traveler. Named for an angel but played linebacker like the devil himself. He’s the guy who crippled that running back. Put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

  Hardin grinned so hard tobacco dribbled onto his chin. “I’ll tell you what, big man. I’ve still got an inning left in my arm right now. You stand up there at home plate and hit a few. Then we’ll answer your questions.”

  “And if I strike out?”

  “Shit,” Cody said. “Nobody hits Ace for the first inning.”

  “What’s the point then?” Traveler asked. But he knew the answer already. They were playing a kid’s game, King of the Mountain, with grown-up weapons.

  “Are you willing or not?”

  Traveler’s answer was to head for the improvised batting area they’d been using along the first base line.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Hardin said. “If I’m going to throw my best stuff, I’ll do it from the mound.” Without waiting for reaction, he sauntered out onto the pitching rubber.

  “Choose your weapon,” Cody said, pointing to a stack of bats leaning against the backstop. Then he coughed out a laugh and trotted to home plate, where he began taking warm-up pitches.

  Traveler removed his sport coat before selecting the longest bat he could find, a thirty-six-inch model that would keep him as far from the plate as possible. But as soon as he stepped into the batter’s box he realized the hopelessness of his situation. No wonder they’d been using a makeshift batting area. The pitching mound was in shadow heavy enough to make Hardin look blurred around the edges.

  Traveler squinted. It didn’t help. By contrast, the area directly around the batter’s box was bathed in bright light.

  “One more warm-up,” Hardin called out.

  Traveler didn’t pick up the ball coming out of the gloom until an instant before it slammed into Cody’s mit. It was a perfect strike, dead-center in the middle of the plate. He couldn’t have hit it with a tennis racket.

  He backed out of the batter’s box and peered up at the light standard behind home plate. Of the ten floodlights arranged in two rows, half were burned out.

  “Shit,” Cody said. “Old jelly-leg has got him already.”

  Catcalls sounded from the outfield, where they were playing Traveler at Little League depth.

  “Son of a bitch,” Traveler muttered, and stepped into the box. He swung the bat a couple of times to limber up; he willed starch into his legs.

  “Hold it,” Fats Cody shouted toward the mound. “We’ve got to be fair.” He trotted to the backstop to retrieve a batting helmet, which he handed to Traveler. “We wouldn’t want you to get hurt. Not too badly, anyway.”

  Traveler rested the bat against his legs while he donned the helmet. The plastic headgear amplified the pulse inside his head like the echo of a seashell.

  “Ready?” Cody asked.

  Traveler tapped the plate with his bat to say that he was.

  The first pitch would have made Pepper Dalton proud. Traveler had to throw himself flat to escape being hit in the head.

  The echo inside his helmet grew louder as he rose to his feet and dusted himself off. His breathing changed. He stoked himself with oxygen and anger just as he’d done before football games; he ignited his rage.

  “Ball one,” he said through clenched teeth.

  He didn’t intend to swing seriously at the next pitch, but only time himself against Hardin’s motion. Yet even that was a futile gesture. The man’s fastball would have been untouchable in broad daylight for someone who hadn’t swung a bat in years.

  “Strike one,” Cody said.

  Strike two seemed even faster. Traveler’s swing was no more than a token wave of the bat.

  “She-it,” Cody said. “We’ve got an old lady up here.”

  Traveler didn’t get the bat around at all on strike three. “That’s it,” the catcher said, coming out of his crouch and removing his mask.

  “Hold it,” Traveler said. “Ace told me he had an inning in him. That’s three outs.”

  “You’re a glutton for punishment.” Cody dropped back into his squat and whistled at the pitcher.

  This time Traveler was ready f
or the beanball, dodging out of the way instead of diving into the dirt.

  “You’ve got him now, Ace,” Cody called out to the mound. “Let’s give him the jelly-leg for real.”

  Traveler backed out of the batter’s box to give himself time to think. Were they being clever? Or were they trying to sucker him? On the other hand, maybe they were underestimating him, figuring that he wouldn’t know about Roy Campanella, the old Brooklyn Dodgers catcher. Jelly-leg had been his way of describing the leg-twitching fear generated by a good curveball.

  One thing was for sure, if he went into the box looking for a curve, a fastball could take his head off.

  “Come on,” Cody shouted. “We haven’t got all night.”

  Traveler didn’t respond, didn’t look at the catcher or the mound. Instead, he grabbed a handful of dirt and concentrated on rubbing the sweat from his bat handle. Ace had said it himself, that he’d lost his chance at the big time when he lost his curve. But there were curves and curves. What might get a pitcher killed in the major leagues would sure as hell be good enough in rural Utah, particularly against an over-the-hill linebacker. Or so they’d think.

  Traveler took a deep breath and told himself that it was going to be a curveball. It had to be; it was his only hope.

  He stepped back into the box, bending forward at the waist so that his upper body was much closer to the plate than before. If the pitch came up fastball, his health insurance premiums would be going up.

  The ball came right at him, waist high. He started his swing certain that it was going to hit him in the ribs. It broke at the last minute, directly into the path of his bat. He pulled the ball to left field, not much of a hit under normal circumstances. But the fielders were playing in too close.

  Traveler sprinted around the bases before they could get the ball back to the catcher.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Cody said as Traveler stepped on home plate. “That ball broke a good foot and a half. Ace struck out a pinch hitter against Gunnison last week with that same pitch.”

  Hardin came charging off the mound to say, “Goddamn it. You knew about jelly-leg, didn’t you?”

  Traveler, who was still catching his breath, only smiled.

  “You bastard. There’s no way you could have hit me without knowing about it. In the old days, when I was in my prime, I could have told you or anybody else that the curve was on its way ahead of time. It wouldn’t have done you any good, not when I still had snap in my arm.”

  “You promised to answer my questions,” Traveler reminded him as the rest of the team gathered around. Cody nodded. “He’s right, Ace. Fair’s fair.”

  “All right,” the pitcher said. “What do you want to know?”

  Traveler pulled on his sport coat while he thought over how to begin. Finally he said, “What kind of man is Pepper Dalton?”

  “That’s easy. He’s not the kind of man to kill his own sister.”

  Cody shook his head. “We can do better than that, Ace. Pepper needs our help.”

  Hardin snorted, then spit for emphasis. “He never struck me as the kind of man who needed help.”

  “You know what I mean,” the catcher said.

  “Come on. Use your head. We don’t know anything that’s going to get him out of jail.”

  “We could say he was here with us at the time of the murder,” the first baseman suggested.

  “Hell, yes,” Cody agreed. “I’d swear to it.”

  Traveler gestured for restraint. “I’m sure Pepper would be grateful for such loyalty, but it’s not going to help. Right now, I need to get some kind of overall view of him. What he’s like personally.”

  “He didn’t like losing, if that’s what you mean,” Hardin said. “He used to jerk me out of games if I so much as walked a batter.”

  The catcher shook his head. “Be fair, Ace. You throw half a dozen curveballs and you’re in pain. And when you run out of fastballs there’s nothing left but the knuckler. When that’s wild, you’ve had it.”

  “What are you doing, bucking for manager?”

  Traveler jumped in before the catcher could think of a comeback. “Just what kind of manager is Pepper?”

  “Like I said,” Hardin went on, “he doesn’t like to lose.”

  “I’ve heard that he’s an advocate of beanballs.”

  “So that’s what happened. You were ready for me. And I thought I was losing my control.”

  “He sounds like a violent man,” Traveler said.

  “Not him,” Cody answered. “Not personally.”

  “What my catcher means is that Pepper told us what we had to do to win.”

  The catcher snorted. “‘We’ is right. We were the ones out on the field. When one side starts throwing beanballs, the other side retaliates. Our heads were on the line, not his.”

  “Pepper’s as tough as they come,” Hardin said. “He knows the game. The fine points. The strategy. He’s better than any of those analysts you hear on television. I”ve watched him. He plans every move in advance, right from the first inning. Nothing ever catches him by surprise.”

  Fats Cody nodded his agreement.

  Traveler looked at the other team members. “What about it? How do the rest of you feel about him?”

  Five minutes later Traveler had a consensus. When it came to baseball, Pepper Dalton knew what he was doing. When it came to people, or players, some liked him, some didn’t.

  “What about his sister?” Traveler asked. “What was she like?”

  Suddenly all eight of them were looking anywhere but at Traveler. When the silence grew uncomfortable Hardin sighed and said, “We’ve seen her over the years, sure. We grew up with her, for God’s sake. But once she took up with the Flock of Zion out there in the hills, we seldom saw her. The fact is, old Zeke Eldredge—he’s the one who calls himself the Shepherd—doesn’t like letting his women out on their own.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Traveler said. “That’s easy. Two games ago.”

  “The one and only time she ever came to see us play,” Cody added.

  “That’s bullcrap, Fats, and you know it. She didn’t come here to see us. Zeke sent her here to cause a scene.” Once the words were out Hardin looked sorry he’d uttered them.

  Traveler said, “You’d better tell me what happened.” The pitcher looked around as if seeking moral support. Nobody gave it. “What the hell,” he said finally. “Priscilla, God rest her, came right into the dugout and started yelling at Pepper.” He indicated the long wooden bench behind first base. “When he tried to quiet her down, she just got louder. She said she intended to shout it to the world.”

  “Shout what?” Traveler asked.

  “That’s right,” Cody said. “Go ahead and put the rope around Pepper’s neck.”

  “It’s no secret. Half the people in town were here,” Hardin said.

  “Let them do the dirty work, then.”

  “Don’t you think it would be better if I heard it from his teammates?” Traveler said.

  “He’s right,” Hardin said, but didn’t elaborate until he got nods of agreement from the others. “She said she’d never sell Glory just so he could play games the rest of his life.”

  “You might as well tell him all of it,” Cody said.

  Hardin spit into the pocket of his glove and then began working the moisture into the leather. “Pepper told us—in the strictest confidence, you understand—that he wanted to sell his inheritance to buy a professional baseball team.”

  “He said he’d give us all tryouts,” Cody added.

  Hardin shook his head. “I never fooled myself about that.”

  “You’ve got five years on the rest of us,” Fats said. “You’ve already had your chance.”

  “You can’t hit me even now,” the pitcher responded. “I’ve been calling your signals so
long I can read your mind.”

  “You want to try it right now?” Hardin said, gesturing toward home plate.

  Before a new king of the mountain could be crowned, Traveler said, “Is there anything else you can tell me about Pepper?”

  “Off the field,” Fats said quickly, his eagerness for a change of subject obvious, “no one knew him better than Kate Ferguson.”

  “They lived together,” Hardin added, “though Bishop Culverwell was doing his best to change that.”

  23

  Kate Ferguson lived in a tiny one-and-a-half-story pioneer house at the edge of town. The house was built of quarried stone that looked darkly volcanic. Its architecture, with two windows and one door facing the road, featured wall dormers and cross gables better suited to a mansion. Hundreds of places just like it had been built throughout southern Utah during the last century. Few had survived. Those that did were called, for a reason Traveler didn’t understand, the Gothic Revival style.

  Kate Ferguson reminded Traveler of a Gothic-looking teacher he’d had in grade school. Both were big-boned and awkward, with salt-and-pepper hair from which pencils protruded. Both wore severe rimless glasses. His teacher’s glasses, however, had given her X-ray powers with which to read his errant thoughts.

  The Ferguson woman had opened the door with a book in her hand. She blinked myopically and took off her reading glasses to get a better look at him. Without her spectacles, her Gothic appearance gave way to that soft, gently wrinkled beauty some women achieve in late middle age. Her smile made him jealous of Pepper Dalton.

  She said, “If you’re Mr. Traveler, I’ve been expecting you.”

  He said that he was.

  “Fillmore is a small town, Mr. Traveler. Especially when you’re already the subject of gossip. I’ve had several calls about you in the last hour.” She hadn’t made it clear just who the gossips were after.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Was it Sheriff Culverwell who phoned first? Or was he acting as Bishop Culverwell?”

  She laughed. “Would that count as one call or two, do you think?”

  “There’s such a thing as separation of church and state.”