Death on the Greasy Grass Read Online Free PDF Page B

name.”
    â€œMy aim was a little off.” Stumper turned onto Hester Street. “I was shooting a .357 Magnum then, and the ER docs in Billings couldn’t save the guy’s arm. He’s working in a prison laundry folding clothes one-armed.” Stumper laughed. “Or should I say one-stumped. So the name stuck.”
    Stumper drove past a rusting street sign proclaiming they had turned off Hill Street when they reached Taft. They turned down a gravel street and Manny caught sight of yellow crime scene tape encircling a large pole building. Harlan’s gray-sided auction barn sat at the end of a dead-end street. In Manny’s last home in Arlington, Virginia, such faults of street planning would be referred to as cul-de-sacs. Here at Crow Agency, it was just one more street that ran out of money before it was connected to another.
    Stumper pulled up in front of police warning signs that had been posted at Harlan White Bird’s auction house. The sign proclaimed the business had been seized as evidence. “Odd for a business to be located on a dead end.” Manny unfolded his legs from the backseat and stretched his hamstrings. He needed to get some road miles in his running shoes, even on vacation. “Wouldn’t think that’d be good for business.”
    â€œDidn’t matter.” Stumper stuffed his can of Copenhagen in his back pocket before Willie could grab it. “Harlan did enough business that people came from all over the country. He could have held his auction in an outhouse and still drawn a crowd. Besides, Harlan was paranoid as hell. Insisted it was easier to watch anyone coming up if the place set on a dead end.”
    Willie walked to the corner of the windowless building and back. He tapped the security keypad hanging on one side of the door. “Did Harlan have a reason to be paranoid?”
    â€œThe quality of the artifacts he gathered for auction would be reason enough for someone to break in.”
    Stumper walked to the door and stood on his tiptoes as he felt for the key above the jamb. Willie reached up and grabbed it, smiling as he handed it to Stumper. “Don’t say a word, big man.”
    Willie backed up, feigning hurt feelings, his hands held out in front of him. “All I was going to say is that’s a hell of a place to hide a key. For someone so paranoid.”
    â€œWho else knew Harlan stashed his key there?” Manny asked.
    Stumper paused. “Probably everyone on Crow Agency. Certainly everyone in Lodge Grass.”
    Stumper had inserted the key when Manny stopped him. “Aren’t you going to disable the alarm?”
    Stumper turned the lock and opened the door. “Security system’s been shot for the better part of a year. Harlan never got around to having it fixed. And yes, most everyone knew about that, too.”
    They followed Stumper into the building as he felt his way around the wall for the light switch. The fluorescents flickered for a moment before catching, a steady humming filling the huge room.
    Stumper caught Manny’s slack-jawed stare. “Winter was Harlan’s slow season, and he’d clear the tables so the local kids had a place to play ball.”
    Manny nodded to basketball hoops on portable stands on one end of the building. “It’s certainly big enough to play ball in here.”
    Stumper led them to where Harlan had arranged wall-to-wall display tables clustered together according to the type of relic. They’d been set so close together that there was just enough room for prospective bidders to walk between them as they inspected the artifacts. Manny walked awed among the tables, the largest collection of authentic Indian artifacts outside a museum he’d ever seen.
    â€œDid I lie about Harlan’s annual auction being impressive?”
    Manny turned away from Stumper and started walking the displays. “You didn’t lie.”
    â€œLook at