The Desert Lake Mystery

by Kay Cleaver Strahan

  I was dumbfounded. “By golly, Brigid,” I said, “but this accounts for that other shot that was fired from Rosemary’s revolver.”

  “The revolver was Twill’s, not Rosemary’s,” she said. “The bullet has hit a studding in there. It didn’t go through to the other side.”

  “There’s your second shot,” I said.

  “I didn’t want a second shot,” she said. “But in books this would have been Rosemary’s shot, gone wild. Someone else would have fired the shot that killed Twill. Both shots would have been fired at the same instant, so they’d sound like only one.”

  “Tomfoolishness,” I said.

  “I know it,” she said. “Of course.”

  Chapter XIII

  I got out my jackknife. Brigid began trying to pull the stool out from under me, telling me not to dare touch that plastering, so I gave up and sat down on the stool again.

  “I’d hate like thunder to think that her first shot went wild,” I said, “and that she up and took a second nip at him.”

  “It would have been a long time between nips. Kent and I had been on the community house porch for at least five minutes. You were with us for several minutes. We all heard only the one shot.”

  “The door was wide open,” I said. “I’d have heard it in the house. And another thing, if Rosemary had been threatening Twill and had shot once, he wouldn’t have waited around in there for her to shoot again. He’d have left right off. Gone some place else.”

  “That gives me an idea,” she said. “Let’s us go some place else, right now, Jeff.”

  “What’s the idea?” I asked her, while she was locking Twill’s door again.

  “Nothing. Just going somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Judge Shively’s cottage?”

  “Not me. We’ve no business there, prying around.” The next thing I knew here she was saying, “Look!” again, but this time she said, “Look, oh, look!”

  It was nothing but a mirage of the ocean, rolling and tossing out yonder above the fence. I never cared for the ocean—too noisy—and I always hated mirages—too eerie. But Brigid, having lived here only off and on for the past fifteen years, went crazy over any fool mirage the same as all outsiders go.

  I had to sit down and wait for her until the entire disturbing display had melted out leaving the nice, dry blue sky again. She gave me a hand to help me up—she’s nice that way—and, “Jeff,” she said, quite solemn, “we just now saw the ocean, didn’t we?

  “Mirage,” I said.

  She nodded. “But we didn’t feel the wind, or the lovely coolness, or hear the old growling surf.”

  “Meaning that seeing isn’t always believing?”

  “Maybe so. It seemed to have some meaning. But I can’t fall into pointing morals. St. Dennis would be stricken. And if here we aren’t, after all.”

  “Brigid,” I remonstrated, standing still on the stoop of the Judge’s cottage. “What’s the sense of this? What’s it going to get us, prying and snooping around like this? What good can it do us?”

  “What harm? You know that Mayor Oakman is keeping Kent in that horrible jail because he hopes that torture will force Rosemary into telling what he calls ‘the truth.’ Rosemary’s told all the truth she knows. But, if by some forlorn hope we could find the truth, or even a part of it, and tell it for her—”

  “Hold on a minute,” I interrupted. “Suppose we could find out this ‘truth.’ Are you dead sure you want it, or would want to tell it if you had it?”

  “I can use my own discretion about telling it, if I get it. Kent can’t stay in that jail. Even a Mexican died there last summer.”

  “He killed himself,” I said.

  “Comforting,” she said, and went on into the kitchen leaving me no choice but to follow her.

  As I was crossing the room I heard something back of the cottage. I glanced out of the kitchen window and saw Rosemary leading Acrasia to the gate, unsaddled the way she always rode her in hot weather. I was glad she was braving it out for her ride, but I was bothered because she was carrying quite a sizable parcel and I knew it meant that she was going to visit Kent in the jail and take him some dainties. I didn’t want her to see that jail, with or without Kent in it. But it was too late then to stop her, so I gave up and went on into the bedroom from where Brigid had been calling me.

  Sure enough, there she was going over that laundry again. Gruesome sight, and she made it worse by insisting that I look close at the pillowslip she claimed was twisted on the pillow and wrong side out besides.

  “Why,” she asked, “should a murderer take a pillowslip off one of the pillows—only one, the other slip is bloodstained too—and then put it on again wrong side out?”

  “He shouldn’t,” I said, “so he wouldn’t. He’d have to hustle. No murderer on earth has time on his hands to change pillowslips backward and forward. It must have been on wrong in the first place.”

  “Except,” she said, sounding pretty nervous, “that it couldn’t have been. You won’t look. If you would look, you’d see what I’ve told you. The blood soaked through the slip into the pillow and made this stain on the ticking. But the way the slip is on now, the stain on the slip doesn’t correspond with the stain on the pillow. See here? After the murder someone found time to take the slip off this pillow and put it on again, twisted and wrong side out. Why? A thing of the sort wouldn’t be done for no reason. What is the reason?”

  She was all wrought up. I was weak from lack of rest and food. I believe that if either of us had been up to par we’d have seen the reason for a simple thing like that right off. Though, as O’Dell said, later, when there is but one possible thing to think it takes rare intelligence to think it. I guess that my intelligence never was very rare, but the one thing I was thinking that morning was that I wanted to get out of that direful place and take Brigid with me.

  “Just a minute,” she said, which is always deceiving, I’ve noted, and kind of pushed me into the clothes closet, insisting that I look.

  Two suits of clothes, which must have been the Judge’s, on account of appearing elderly, gray and wrinkled, were hanging on the rod, along with a very snappy light tan suit that certainly must have belonged to Clyde Shively. The old gentleman’s broad brimmed hat was on the shelf beside a soft, stylish-looking one that matched the tan suit. On the floor were three valises, or grips, as we used to call them but Brigid called them by different names, and several empty liquor bottles.

  “This Gladstone,” she said, dragging out the large valise, “and this small bag were the Judge’s. I know because I went with Kent and Betty-Jean to meet him at the station.”

  She opened them both up, but nothing was in them. The old Judge, of course, had unpacked and his toothbrush, hairbrushes, razor and so on were around the house in the places where they should be.

  Clyde Shively, planning on leaving that night, had not unpacked to any extent. His brushes and things were all banded up neat on one lid of his little grip, and the other lid had an envelope thing holding very fancy shirts and neckties. In between were socks, underwear and so on; but instead of being tossed in loose they were folded and fixed the fussiest I ever saw. Even his shoes were tied up separately in silk sacks with drawstrings. Unthinkingly, I remarked that the whole lay-out looked very sissy to me.

  “I’d say ‘fastidious’, “ Brigid answered, “except that he didn’t bring an extra suit of clothes with him. There’s only the one he wore, hanging there in the closet.”

  “He wouldn’t want to squidge a good suit down into that little space in his valise,” I told her.

  “No, he couldn’t in this bag,” she said. “But I should think that a man of his sort would have brought an extra bag——”

  “Oh, well,” I interrupted firmly, taking the bag and closing it and setting it back in the closet, “with all there is on hand we can’t waste time worrying about his having only one suit of clothes. Or, wait a minute,”

  I said, havin
g a thought. “The boys must have put his other suit on him this morning when they were getting him ready.”

  “No,” she said. “A lounging robe. What is there on hand?”

  I had a mean, nagging feeling that there was lots; but I couldn’t name it just then so I turned that off. “He came up here to fetch his father home,” I said “So why should he bother with a big wardrobe? I like it in him,” I added, easing her toward the door by her elbow, “coming just as he was.”

  “I’m wondering whether taking his father home was the reason for his coming. I keep remembering that C. C. Shively who edited Stars and Asterisks.”

  I’d got her to the kitchen door by this time and was more intent on getting her out of there than I was on the conversation; so I said, “Well, whatever he came for he didn’t come to get killed,” and shoved her gently out on the stoop.

  “He didn’t come to get killed,” she said. “I’m wondering whether he did bring another piece of luggage with him?”

  “What in thunder if he did?” I asked, getting some impatient.

  “If he did,” she said, “where is it?”

  My only excuse is that I was so sick of these “where-is-its” that I wasn’t myself. “Where is it?” I said. “It’s out cantering across the deserts. It’s leaping the lake and swimming the fence, for all I care. The one thing I know for certain is that it wasn’t cooked for breakfast and that I didn’t eat it.”

  “Jeff she said. “Haven’t you had breakfast?”

  “Nor supper last night, either,” I said.

  She said, “No wonder you’re bearish.” But, she’s nice that way, she took the sting out of it by inviting me right down to her cottage for something to eat.

  “About that bag,” she said, as we walked along. “If Clyde Shively did bring another piece of luggage, and if it had something of value in it——”

  “Listen to reason, Brigid,” I begged. “If he brought another bag, it’ll be something else missing. We don’t need anything else missing. And we don’t need a robbery, either—if that’s what you’re hinting at. We’ve plenty without.”

  “I think that we have a robbery whether we need it or not,” she said. “If you hadn’t been in such a hurry I meant to show you that the pockets of Clyde Shively’s suit, there in the closet, had been searched and every single thing taken out of them.”

  “I’ll bet you Adam cleaned them out this morning. Effects for the bereaved, or evidence, maybe.”

  “No. I looked through those pockets last night when we were hunting for clues, or whatever it was we thought we were doing there last night. The pockets were empty then. Since, I’ve searched everywhere for the things that must have been in those pockets. I can’t find them.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “that was his best suit that he did bring extra. Likely his other suit, with the pockets full, is the one that is missing. Or, maybe, one of those suits that we took to be the Judge’s was Clyde Shively’s other suit, after all.”

  “Rosemary said that Clyde Shively was wearing a light tan suit when she met him. I asked her, particularly. No youngish man would own those old-fashioned gray Palm Beach things. And having the entire suit missing, instead of what was in the pockets, wouldn’t help any, would it?”

  “Say,” I said, “I have an idea. What would any man, kind of dusty and travel-worn, do after meeting Rosemary and knowing that he was going to meet her again? He’d spruce up. Clyde Shively took off his suit and put on his pajamas, and pressed it up nice and hung it in the closet.”

  “But what did he do with the things that he’d take out of his pockets?”

  I sighed, heavily on purpose.

  “Pressing his suit does seem reasonable,” she admitted. “Especially since he was wearing his pajamas when he was killed. Maybe the old Judge objected to nothing but shorts. I wonder whether the Judge was wearing pajamas, too? They’d be cooler. His watch was in one of his suit pockets——”

  “Brigid,” I remonstrated. “You didn’t go through the old gentleman’s pockets, too, did you?”

  “Rifled them,” she said, vexed, “while you and Mayor Oakman were searching the hardware in the kitchen. I found his watch, and his billfold with fifty dollars in it and a return ticket to Pasadena. A leather key-holder, too; and some of his cards, and some loose silver and a handkerchief.”

  “Would a robber pass up a watch and fifty dollars?” She didn’t answer. I guess she was thinking. I was.

  The old gentleman’s hat on the shelf; his keys, his money and his watch in his pocket. His cane in the corner of the room—we’d noted the cane the night before—and his glasses flipping out of Reggie’s pocket. Wherever the old Judge was it certainly didn’t look as if he’d started out to go there on purpose.

  We had come to Rosemary’s cottage by this time and Brigid stopped. “You go on, Jeff,” she said, “and fill the kettle for some hot water. I’m running in to see Rosemary for a second.”

  I was glad to be able to tell her that Rosemary had gone for a ride. “The only thing is,” I added, “that I hate like thunder having her see Kent in that jail.”

  “She won’t,” Brigid answered. “That’s one reason I told her that Mayor Oakman and the boys were on the mountain. I knew she wouldn’t want to pass them.”

  “I’ll bet you she goes the other way,” I said. “She could by rounding the lake and picking her way through the low hills. I know that she’s going to see Kent, because she was carrying a large package of dainties to him—almost as big as a pillow.”

  “A—what?” Brigid asked, kind of startled. I thought that she was remembering the pillow we’d been examining, so I hurried to set her mind at ease.

  “Not a bed pillow,” I told her. “It was just a fair-sized box. It might hold a ham, or a watermelon, but I doubt it. I’d judge it would hold maybe half a dozen oranges, a couple of grapefruit, a small thermos of that nice iced coffee you folks make over here, with maybe some sandwiches tucked in around the edges.”

  “Come on, Jeff,” Brigid said. “We’ll eat.”

  Chapter XIV

  Barely in the nick of time to ruin my breakfast for me, Reggie came prowling in, sat down at the table and began looking around for napkin, knife and fork.

  “Don’t bother about Reggie, Brigid,” I said. “He’s had his breakfast. He’s not hungry.”

  He gave me a queer look before he began reciting, “‘Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The——’”

  “Reggie,” Brigid stopped him, she’s nice that way, “won’t you have some toast and marmalade and coffee?”

  Seemed that he would, if that was all there was, though he peered pointedly at the bacon and eggs I was finishing as fast as I could.

  “I think that we should all consider all alibis,” he said, while waiting for his first slice of toast to pop up; but, after that, he didn’t say much of anything until the butter gave out, when he asked, “Do you know where Rosemary is?”

  Brigid said, “She went for a short ride on Acrasia.”

  “Dear me,” Reggie said. “I hope she comes back.”

  “What do you mean, if you mean anything, by that?” Brigid asked very slowly.

  “Of course,” Reggie kind of apologized. “In some ways I’d really rather she didn’t come back. You understand?”

  “No,” Brigid said. “I don’t understand—at all.” It was the “at all” that took care of the kick back. Reggie blew his nose before answering. “I meant that if she did——Or, well, say that she merely knew about Clyde Shively’s being killed yesterday afternoon. And—well, if she brought the bloodstained pillow down to Twill’s cottage, and——”

  “It is rather soon after breakfast,” Brigid interrupted, coldly furious, “to go into details. But”—she dipped a corner of her napkin into a glass of water—“how long do you think it would take this”—she spread the wet corner out flat—“to dry in this heat and altitude?”

  “Goodness!” Reggie said,
vexed. “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you do,” Brigid said. “You know that it would take a very short time. But in plain language, for you, the bloodstains on the pillow in Twill’s cottage last night and on Rosemary’s frock were bright red, wet and fresh. The stains in the Judge’s cottage were brown and completely dry. Sorry, Jeff. Repugnant, isn’t it? Shall we talk of something else?”

  Reggie was willing and glad too. He unscrewed his face and began: “Mummy says that no matter how much Uncle Adam may want to hush this up, and for no matter what reasons, he won’t be able to do so for very long. We think he should engage a criminologist. Betty-Jean knows of some perfectly marvelous chap in Los Angeles.”

  “Nobody,” I remarked, “in Oakman County, much less Adam Oakman, would import anything, much less a marvelous chap from L. A.”

  “Well, of course,” Reggie said, very reprovingly, “we all thought of Uncle Adam’s unreasonable prejudices against California. But Betty-Jean thinks that she can persuade Kent to engage him. Kent, you know, has a perfectly wonderful alibi. He left camp shortly after one o’clock, was in the poolroom most of the afternoon, and walked home getting here a few minutes before seven. So we think that Kent will be only too glad to engage him. Dear me,” Reggie began snapping his fingers, “the name was just on the tip of my tongue. It began with a G. Gangrene—Gemini—Gooseberry——”

  Thinking my own thoughts, I decided that Kent wouldn’t be apt to warm up, much, on the subject of detectives. My idea was that since Twill’s body was hidden, and well hidden, Kent would be willing to leave it wherever it was.

  When I began listening again Reggie had either fought his way out of his G’s or had given up. He was talking, now, about this Miss Lynn MacDonald who, afterward, was engaged on the case.

  “Betty-Jean mentioned her,” he was saying. “But we think that Uncle Adam’s prejudice against women is so strong that even if Kent engaged her, Uncle Adam wouldn’t allow her to work on the case. Place? Case?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “But the guy who told you Adam was prejudiced against ladies is a zoophite. He’s famed, noted, for liking the. ladies.”