The Desert Lake Mystery

by Kay Cleaver Strahan

  Nobody answered what I’d said about the tourists, so I said, “Or, maybe, he swam the lake.”

  Mrs. Duefife got me such a clip on the ankle then that I jumped.

  Betty-Jean, who had been sitting holding her forehead with her hands, kind of shivered and one of her hands clenched up into a little, trembling fist. “No, no, no!” she said. “He couldn’t swim with that heavy brace on and he couldn’t walk six steps without it. I think, I suppose everyone thinks, that whoever killed Clyde did swim the lake and run away. But they can’t accuse Twill of that because—because he was a cripple. I never thought I’d be glad of that.

  He hated it so dreadfully. But I am glad. Because he can’t be accused. He can’t be——”

  Mrs. Duefife broke in very soothingly. “Of course he can’t, dear. No one who ever knew Twill at all could or would accuse him of any wrongdoing.”

  “He was so good,” Betty-Jean said. “Wasn’t he? I mean isn’t he? And think of me trying to make him better—taking his little pleasures away from him. He was so gentle and kind. His big brown eyes——”

  She had been fumbling with the breakfast things, trying to be controlled and brave, but it was a relief when she stopped biting her lips and folded her arms on the back of her chair and put her head down on them.

  It seemed to me the best thing I could do was leave. I got my hat from under the chair and tiptoed away.

  Chapter XII

  Rosemary’s cottage was next door to Mrs. Duefife’s, so I was hesitating in front of it wondering if Rosemary had stayed the night there or at Twill’s when Brigid spied me from the window and came out. Being younger and wearing her swimming suit she didn’t look as terrible as the other ladies, but her hair was going all the wrong way in front and stood up behind like a turkey’s tail.

  She said that Rosemary was in her own cottage—that Adam had made her move in the middle of the night so that he could lock Twill’s place—but that she had gone to sleep about half an hour ago and should not be wakened on any account, not even the note I’d brought her from Kent.

  “How is Kent?” Brigid wanted to know, next. “And where?”

  “In jail, but fine,” I told her, sitting down on the stoop, and adding when she looked accusingly at me, “or so he says. I couldn’t help it, Brigid. Honest. I tried every way to keep him from going there.”

  “Sorry, Jeff,” she said, “I’m sure you did. Isn’t Mayor Oakman revolting? Kent thinks he’d put Rosemary in jail if he didn’t go in her place. What I’m wondering is, could Mayor Oakman have had any reason for killing that Clyde Shively?

  “Skipping that,” she went on, answering my remonstrances, “whoever killed Clyde Shively must have had a reason for doing so.”

  “Motive,” I told her. “I thought about that. But then I thought I wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, but you’ll have to,” she said. “Now here’s something. When St. Dennis looked for Judge Shively’s name in Who’s Who and found the son, Clyde C., we wondered whether he could be the C. C. Shively who was editing a blackmailing paper in New York three years ago. We thought it possible, because Pasadena is close to Hollywood and this blackmailing Shively began his paper in Hollywood before he came to New York. I saw the paper myself. It was named Stars and Asterisks. Wholly rotten. St. Dennis and I were in New York three years ago, you remember?”

  “You saw Kent off for Europe. I remember.”

  “Yes. Well, Mrs. Duefife, Reggie, Twill and Rosemary all came out here from New York. So any one of them might have known Clyde Shively, if he is the blackmailing one, back there. But it seems to me that Mayor Oakman is the only one here who is important enough to blackmail, or who’d have money to pay.

  “Now I was with Betty-Jean for an hour alone last night. She is what St. Dennis and I thought, but she has something besides. Something decent, that can forgive. She’s sorry for Rosemary instead of hating her. Something even decenter, that can spell courage backward and forward. I suppose I should admit that I can’t really believe that Mayor Oakman killed that man. But, all the same, it isn’t fair for anyone to go around thinking, as you are, that because Betty-Jean the only one who knew Clyde Shively before he came here, she is the only one who had a motive for killing him.”

  “I never thought any such thing,” I said.

  “If you should,” she said, “remember that Betty-Jean is Mayor Oakman’s daughter. If that Clyde Shively came here with some idea of blackmailing her, and presented the scheme to her father—— I heard what he said last night about times when he’d been glad he hadn’t a gun in his hands. So did you hear him.”

  “He was talking through his hat,” I said. “Coming over here this morning, I was thinking about the facts we had to date. At half-past seven last night Rosemary shot Twill. Within six to ten minutes after we heard the shot his body disappeared. Close to two hours later we found Clyde Shively shot in the back, a quarter of a mile away from Twill’s place. Right after that we missed old Judge Shively and he can’t be found high nor low. The footprints by the gate show that nobody left the camp after four o’clock, or came in after Kent did, around seven. Leaving the lake out of it——”

  “Why leave it out?” she interrupted. “I swam over it at sunrise this morning. Later, when Joe Laud brought the canoe, I paddled it all over the lake with Mayor Oakman in it. Silly. From the center of the lake we could have seen any dark object bigger than my foot.”

  She went on then telling what I’ve told before and what I was told many times afterward, all about the close examination of the fence, inside and out; and about the lake shores being tracked up but no tracks being found by the fence ends, and all searchings and examinations revealing no way for any person to have got in or out of the camp. Except, of course, by swimming the lake.

  I was kind of interested in how Joe had made out with the boat so after while I asked her if he came across all right.

  “I swam over and pushed him across,” she said.

  “Did he get away all right?” I asked.

  “He escaped with his life, if that’s what you mean. But when I think how tyrannical and cruel Mayor Oakman can be, when he is angry with anyone, I shiver for Joe. It is just as Mrs. Duefife said this morning. Adam Oakman has every man, woman and child in his darned old county, except St. Dennis and me, utterly cowed. And when one of them dares revolt——”

  “What did poor old Joe do?” I interrupted.

  “As for that,” she said, “your poor old Joe acted abominably. He arrived in some sort of high fury. And when Mayor Oakman asked him to take Clyde Shively’s body across the lake in the canoe and on to Ferras, through Nameless, Joe exploded. It was a necessary, reasonable request, because the Tumboldt Road is still impassable for cars. The small truck they’d brought the canoe in from Nameless was at the boathouse over there waiting. I don’t know what was the matter with Joe. He began, of a sudden, accusing Mayor Oakman of throwing dead bodies in the lake last night and ‘fishing’ them out and carrying them up to Dead Man’s Hook and throwing them down there. I shall never dare tell St. Dennis. He’d think it amusing. It wasn’t, I’m sure. Was it, Jeff?”

  “No, child. It was sad. Very sad. Terrible.”

  “It was not,” she said. “But everything else is. Don’t call me ‘child.’ I wish Betty-Jean wouldn’t call me ‘Briggy.’ Isn’t it odd that I should notice, or care now?”

  “What became of Joe?” I asked.

  “I took the body across in the canoe. Joe would not. The Killaky boys from Nameless were there with their truck. They were grand. Don’t bother saying that they are Indians. You’ve no idea how civilized they seemed after the white men on this side of the lake.”

  “Adam shouldn’t have let you do an errand like that. Your papa wouldn’t like it. Where did Joe go?”

  “Mayor Oakman wasn’t to blame. Someone who could manage a canoe had to take it. I didn’t mind. It was all covered up. I haven’t the slightest horror of death. That is”—she shuddered all over—“not much
horror.”

  “But what about Joe?” I asked. I hate admitting, even now, that I was chump enough, for a spell, to be worried some about those ropes the boys had been toting. Nervous as I was, I didn’t think for a minute that Joe’s life was in danger. But I did think that if Adam had chosen a time like that to try scaring Joe to death it was very unseemly and would make a lot of talk.

  “I finally got him across in the canoe,” she said, “and he went with the Killaky boys in the truck. I waited over there and brought the rope back. Mayor Oakman had telephoned to Sig Hansen’s for it.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “What is it?” she said. “You’re frightened, aren’t you?”

  I denied it up and down.

  “I know better,” she said, so pale that her freckles stuck out like stars. “You’re afraid of what they are going to find when they climb down those ropes into the crevice below Dead Man’s Hook.”

  “It is a pretty dangerous undertaking,” I said, “even with ropes, getting down into that place.”

  “Jeff,” she said, “tell me. I’ll know soon. Are they going to find anything down there? I mean, what are they going to find?”

  “Nothing that I know of,” I said.

  “If you’ve heard Mayor Oakman talking about refuting certain sorts of insinuations——”

  “Stop hissing like that, Brigid,” I said; she was getting me nervous.

  “Shut up!” she said. “Whatever he may have been up to in all this he doesn’t believe that anything is going to be found in that crevice. If anything is found he is going to be utterly pitiless.”

  “I can’t help it,” I said.

  “You’re mistaken,” she said. “You can. You are going to. We have time to get Rosemary away right now. I’ll telephone to the Killaky boys. They’ll be back from Ferras. They always loaf around Sig Hansen’s poolroom. They’ll meet us with a car across the lake. They’re grand. They won’t tell. Have you any money? I’ve twenty dollars—enough for them. I can get more for Rosemary. Stop sitting there looking comfortable. If you don’t tell me what you know, I’ll swear that I killed Clyde Shively myself. I’ll stick to it——”

  She had stood up and was pounding me with her fists, so I was forced to hold them. “Listen to me,” I begged. “I don’t know what may be found down there. Honest, Brigid, I don’t. How would I know?”

  “Let go of me!” she said. “How would you know? You rode with Kent around there last night. Why were you frightened a minute ago, when you heard that the men were going there? Will you tell me that? Will you let go of me!”

  After quite a while I got her calmed and convinced that no matter what might be found in the crevice below Dead Man’s Hook, neither Kent nor I had put it there nor knew the first thing about it.

  She sighed and sat on the stoop beside me and said she was sorry she had kicked my shins. “If you and Kent didn’t,” she went on, “then no one did and nothing is there. The boys wouldn’t, unless Mayor Oakman had told them to. He didn’t. He doesn’t expect to find anything in that crevice.”

  Long before this I’d been sick of the whole subject, so I took my chance to change it. “Brigid,” I said, “supposing old Judge Shively did shoot his son——”

  “Idiot! The old man was sweet, gentle, diffident——”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’m saying only supposing he did. And supposing that he escaped, afterward.

  What would his shooting his son have to do with the disappearance of Twill’s dead body?”

  “Nothing at all,” she said.

  “Why not?” I asked, wondering if she really knew. She did.

  “Because no murderer would burden himself with an extra dead body. We’re getting ludicrous. Judge Shively was a decrepit old darling.”

  “Supposing, then,” I said, “that he didn’t kill his son, but was killed himself by the same person who killed his son——”

  “That is what has happened, of course,” she said.

  “I think you’re right,” I agreed. “But what would these two murders have to do with the disappearance of Twill’s body?”

  “Nothing at all,” she said again, and sighed again.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I was thinking that if Clyde Shively and his father were both killed by the same person, then this person might have had some good way of disposing of bodies, and might have disposed of Twill’s and the Judge’s at the same time.”

  “And left Clyde Shively’s body there, for us to find? You’re being tiresome, Jeff. The one thing we do know is that whoever killed Clyde Shively did not kill Twill. So why on earth should he bother stealing Twill’s body in order to dispose of it?”

  “Maybe to help Rosemary,” I said. “Or maybe he wanted Twill’s clothes, or something that Twill had on him. I don’t know, but there might be any number of answers to that.”

  “Who killed Clyde Shively, and why?” she snapped.

  I was taken aback. “I don’t know. You know I don’t know, Brigid.”

  “All the answers you have,” she said, “are for the wrong questions. I thought I’d see if you could find a right answer for the right question.”

  “Suppose you try answering that right question.”

  “Yes. If you and Mayor Oakman are telling the truth about those footprints outside the gate, then either Mayor Oakman, or Betty-Jean, or Mrs. Duefife,

  “Shame on you,” I interrupted. “Rats! Some outsider could have come in before the rain.”

  “Clyde Shively did so himself; but we found him here afterward.”

  “The murderer could have got away by swimming the lake.”

  “Taking two dead bodies with him?”

  I heard someone stirring around in the cottage, and was glad to say so. Brigid knocked on the door and in a minute or two Rosemary opened it.

  I guess she looked terrible, but it was becoming to her and the way she thanked me for Kent’s note made me feel that unless I could do something more for her, right then, I’d burst out bawling as bad as Jeremiah. So I told her that I’d brought Acrasia home for her to ride, and blessed if she didn’t start thanking me, again, for that, until I had to tell her it was Kent’s idea.

  “He knew riding would be the best thing in the world for you, Rosemary, dear,” Brigid said. “Why don’t you go for a ride right now?”

  “I wish I could. But Uncle Adam would object.”

  “He’s gone,” Brigid said. “He and the boys have ridden over to see what damage the cloudburst did on the Tumboldt Road. He is going to direct the repair work over there. He won’t be home for hours.”

  Brigid rattled this off so fast, not giving it the dignity due a good lie, that I believed her myself while she was talking.

  Speaking of lies, though, and out of fairness to the kid, I think I ought to mention that she was not the only one on the place who could carry her lies like a gentleman, making one part fit into another snug as a lid, or coming along in such good order like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, that no decent person could ever think of doubting them.

  I reproved her, though, as soon as Rosemary had gone into the house and left us alone together. “Your papa wouldn’t like it at all,” I said, “if he had heard you telling stories about road repairing like that.”

  “Like what?” she asked, vexed, and added: “Don’t, don’t sit down again. Come along with me. We’re going places and look at things while Mayor Oakman is away.”

  I wanted to explain to her that I’d had a bad night and no breakfast, but I didn’t. I tagged along with her to the back door of Twill’s cottage, where she stopped and said, “Look.”

  I looked, but saw nothing except us and the landscape.

  “Here,” she said.

  Nothing was there but a swimming suit spread out on a clump of sagebrush to dry.

  “Twill’s,” she explained.

  It made me feel sad. I’d liked the boy. He was a good clean boy, nice-appearing and full of fun—fine company.

  “D
on’t grieve,” she said, taking a key out of the little pocket on her belt. “Think. Remember it when Reggie begins telling you that he saw Twill in swimming yesterday afternoon. Come in, why don’t you?”

  I followed her into the kitchen, but I was bothered. “I thought you said Adam locked this cottage up.”

  “He did. And Kent’s cottage, and Judge Shively’s. But all our keys fit all the cottages, and Mayor Oakman, I’ve been told, is a brilliant man.” She picked up a three-legged stool and carried it into the parlor.

  When I got in there she had put the stool close to the wall between the bedroom and the parlor and beside the panel of that doggone wall bed. “Stand up on this,” she said, “and you can see better.”

  I looked around the room, which was even tidier than it had been the night before because Mrs. Duefife and Reggie weren’t in it, and told her I could see all right from where I was.

  “Please, Jeff,” she said, and so for the sake of peace I stood up on it. I had to stoop to keep from bumping my head on the ceiling and I couldn’t see any better from there than I had seen on the floor, if as well. I’d known I couldn’t, and I said so.

  She made a sound that for a horse would have been a very mournful whinnying as she came back in from the breakfast nook where she’d just gone. “Turn around and look,” she said.

  I felt I had to draw the line somewhere at satisfying her whims and I drew it. I sat down on the stool.

  “Here’s a cartridge,” she said, handing me one, so I hardly know why I asked, “What’s this?”

  “I hid it in the sugar bowl last night,” she said. “I’m glad I did, because it was the only one I could find and now Mayor Oakman has taken the revolver. I’m sure that the bullet would fit that hole. What do you think? You’ll have to stand on the stool to see.” Come to find out, the thing she had called a “spot” the night before was a bullet hole and if she had said so in the first place none of the misunderstanding would have occurred. The minute I got on the stool and looked at it I could see it was a bullet hole, and I could tell that the bullet in the cartridge she gave me would fit into it.