The Desert Lake Mystery

by Kay Cleaver Strahan

  “What is a ‘zoophite?” Brigid asked. It was just like her.

  “You ought to know,” I said. “Your papa told me An animal of the lowest origin bearing some resemblance to a plant.”

  “Mayor Oakman,” she said, “adores ‘the ladies.’ He despises women with brains. No, he distrusts them, dislikes them——”

  “Oh, my!” Reggie broke in. “I came here to talk about alibis. And all you’ll do is bandy words. Just bandy and bandy and bandy words.”

  “Grand word, ‘bandy,’” Brigid said. “It bears repetition. Bandy, bandy. But, Reggie, if you came to discuss alibis, as you call them——”

  “That’s the right word for them,” Reggie said.

  “It means where were you, or——”

  “If you came to discus alibis,” Brigid interrupted, “why don’t you? Rosemary talked with Judge Shively and his son just before four o’clock; so, beginning with after that time——”

  “No,” Reggie said, and got solemn and said, “No.”

  “Why?” Brigid asked.

  Reggie said, “We’ve only her word for it that she talked to them at that time,” and added poutingly, “I don’t care, that’s all we have for it. I like Rosemary. I liked Twill, too. But any girl who could indulge in a mad moment of passion and kill her own brother——

  Well, for goodness’ sakes, any girl who could indulge in one mad moment of passion could indulge in two or three, couldn’t she? Besides, such things run in families. You can’t rely on the words of such persons. And,” he finished, out of a clear sky, “I am not forgetting that it was before four o’clock when I saw Twill in swimming.”

  “Listen to me, Reggie,” Brigid said. “You and I talked last night, while I was making you sandwiches, about your seeing Twill in swimming. You declared then that Twill was wearing his own bright yellow and white swimming suit. That he saw you and waved to you. That he was swimming toward this shore, wearing his own swimming suit. You agreed that there is no other suit like it on the place.”

  “I said it,” Reggie answered, quite noble. “I told the truth.”

  “I know you did,” she nodded. “I knew it last night when I found Twill’s swimming suit spread on the sagebrush outside his cottage to dry.”

  “Change the subject, if you want to,” Reggie said.

  “I am not changing the subject,” she said. “I am saying that Twill’s suit drying outside his cottage proves that he returned to camp after you saw him in swimming.”

  Reggie said, “Well, for goodness’ sakes, of course he returned. He wouldn’t have been here at half-past seven for Rosemary to shoot if he hadn’t returned,” and finished off by tutting his tongue against his front teeth for a long time, until Brigid said:

  “Stop that, you Reggie Duefife. Stop that silly ticking at me, or I’ll shake you till your glasses fall off, and I’ll grind them up, and I’ll put the pieces into——”

  “Brigid,” I warned hurriedly, “Brigid. Now, now.”

  Reggie arose and kind of staggered over to the window. “‘O, the barren, barren shore,’ “ he stated.

  Brigid rubbed her head with her hands, making her hair look very much worse. “Sorry,” she said to me, after a minute or two, and, “You-hoo, Reggie. I’m sorry.”

  Reggie wouldn’t answer. From a rear view he looked like he was telling himself he wouldn’t deign to answer.

  “Jeff,” she said, lifting her voice a little, “do you suppose that Reggie was making some connection between Twill’s being in swimming yesterday afternoon and Clyde Shively’s murder?”

  “I can’t see it,” I said. “Not since Twill came back. Of course if he’d swum off. But he couldn’t swim with that heavy brace on, and anywhere he’d landed he couldn’t have walked without it.”

  “Still,” Brigid argued. “I think Reggie must have meant to imply some connection between Twill’s swimming and Clyde Shively’s being killed.”

  Reggie kind of quivered all over. “I expected that,” he said.

  There wasn’t a lick of sense to that remark and I knew it. Brigid should have known it too. But one of the big troubles with her and her papa is that they always think everything everybody says ought to make sense. She shouldn’t have asked him what he meant. He couldn’t answer, and it was so humiliating for all of us that I was actually relieved when Brigid opened the door to admit Mrs. Duefife who had just tapped on it.

  Just inside the room she stopped and said, looking at me, “What is done is done. But do not ask me to believe that any dear good soul here in this forsaken place has been driven into crime.”

  Brigid spoke up. I never knew her to do such a thing before in her life. “‘What I did, I did,’ “ she said. “‘Not with a random inconsiderate blow but from old Hate, and with maturing Time.’”

  Everybody gasped, even Brigid, before she slapped her own mouth with one hand and held it there. I hope I didn’t look as shocked as Mrs. Duefife looked, but I felt it. Reggie’s features being too fat to display the stronger emotions just gave an impression of gradually melting down.

  “I’m sorry,” Brigid apologized. “The rhythm, you know. It sounded the same. And Reggie’s habit of quoting—— One falls into it, sort of-—”

  Reggie spoke up, directly to his mamma. “See there? They blame everything on me,” he said.

  “No, we don’t,” Brigid said. “But, Mrs. Duefife, I think you shouldn’t allow Reggie to go roaming around saying that Rosemary lied about the time Judge Shively introduced his son to her.”

  Reggie said, “I did not,” and blew his nose.

  “Don’t, dearest,” Mrs. Duefife said, and added, “Mummy knows you didn’t, dearest.”

  “Yes, but he did,” Brigid said. “Didn’t he, Jeff?”

  “He just wondered——“ I began.

  “As we all are bound to wonder,” Mrs. Duefife caught me off base, and went on talking straight along. Reggie dozed a little. Brigid swatted the flies. I soon gave up swallowing my yawns and yawned them, but I listened for quite a while.

  Seemed that, about a quarter past one o’clock the day before, Mrs. Duefife and Reggie had gone to the community house and found Betty-Jean, Adam and Kent there. Kent was on a ladder in the storeroom—the ladder that collapsed, later, under Reggie—handing down things from the shelves to Adam for restocking the kitchen supplies.

  Adam immediately resigned his job in Reggie’s favor. Mrs. Duefife helped Betty-Jean pack the big electric refrigerator with fancy fruits and vegetables that the folks got every few days by express from Phoenix. Timmy Monk, the grocer at Ferras, had delivered them about one o’clock, as usual, along with the things ordered from his store. Betty-Jean was sick with disappointment, she said, because the candles sent from Phoenix were red instead of light green; and when on top of that she found that Timmy had forgotten the sherry wine she was so upset that Adam suggested that she and Kent drive over to Ferras and fetch it.

  Kent was agreeable. He said that they’d get Rosemary and Twill and all go. Adam put a stopper in that by saying that Rosemary had agreed to make the fourth at bridge with Mrs. Duefife, Reggie and himself that afternoon, and proved it by telephoning right then to Rosemary and telling her that they were waiting for her.

  By the time the ladies had finished packing the refrigerator Rosemary had come, so the four bridge players went to it in the big living room and Kent and Betty-Jean struck out to go to Ferras.

  “Kent went by himself, though,” I said.

  Brigid said, “Betty-Jean told me that Twill was in one of his ‘temperamental moods.’ He refused to go, so Betty-Jean thought that she shouldn’t either. Twill was jealous of Kent, you know. Besides, Betty-Jean had her place cards to write. She wanted Twill to help her with those, but he wouldn’t. He was sweet, but he did sulk, and——”

  “My dear!” Mrs. Duefife interrupted. “Those place cards! She should have asked Reggie to help her. ‘Rosemary, our good fairy.’ ‘Mrs. Duefife’s chair, she’s always fair.’ And——”
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  I found myself losing track, after that, catching only some of her easier sentences, now and then.

  “No person but Adam Oakman,” she said, “had opportunity to conceal with deliberate malice and crafty cunning those glasses in my son’s pocket.”

  Brigid astonished me by answering, “Mayor Oakman wouldn’t, I’m sure, Mrs. Duefife. And whoever did it wasn’t so very wicked, because we all know that no one could think of Reggie in connection with a thing like murder. He couldn’t be considered.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” Mrs. Duefife said, and went on all about how no intelligent adult could consider either, or for one moment, that a woman of breeding who had left a bridge game to procure a tube of nasal jelly for her son had been gone less than ten minutes before returning not only to play but also to win, could have been a party to any conspiracy while absent.

  It is a queer thing about these good talkers. They put in all the effort and yet I never saw one who didn’t tire everybody else out long before she got tired herself. But, in time, even Mrs. Duefife admitted that she was overly fatigued and asked me to put down the wall bed for her. The doggone thing dropped pretty heavily. It was a big relief to me when I gave it a quick glance and found nothing in it but the bedcovers.

  Is talking contagious? I’ve thought so. Brigid never was much of a hand for it in long attacks, but that day Mrs. Duefife hadn’t much more than closed her eyes after throwing herself on the bed, than Brigid began. When the wind started tearing the world up by the roots, she said, she had run to the community house because, like everybody in this country, she adored thunderstorms but she liked sharing them.

  Not getting such a very cordial welcome from the bridge players, she had gone into the kitchen where she caught Reggie, who was dummy then, slicing and eating nice rounds of fresh pineapple.

  Sure enough, as soon as she had read Betty-Jean’s dinner menu, tacked on the wall, she found that Betty-Jean was planning to have Pineapple Supreme for dessert that evening and that Reggie had already made away with most of the fruit.

  Trouble ensued. They hunted for canned pineapple and, finding none, Reggie agreed that he’d go to his cottage and get some cans he had there, just as soon as the rain eased up a little. Also, a bargain was struck that if Brigid wouldn’t let on that Reggie had known about the pineapple being for the pudding, and the pudding being for the dessert, Brigid could take his hand at the bridge table for one hour.

  “Pardon me, Brigid,” I said, when she’d got this far, “but considering all there is to do, I guess I should be doing something.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, and had me there.

  Reggie had gone into the kitchen. Mrs. Duefife was snoring light, lady-like snores. Brigid glanced at her and came closer to me.

  “Jeff,” she said, lowering her voice, “bloodstained pillowslips wrong side out, bullets in the wall, empty pockets, missing luggage, don’t kill men or steal dead bodies.

  “I mean,” she explained, answering my protests, “that people do. So it seems to me that studying the people who might, at least possibly, be involved is more intelligent than running about searching for other ‘clues’ as you say.”

  “I never did,” I denied. “But I suppose what you mean is that you are agreeing with Reggie, wanting to look into alibis.”

  “No,” she said. “Or, well—call it opportunity. But I was thinking more, I believe, of reasons, provocations. What happened yesterday afternoon might be important it seems to me. Don’t you think so?”

  I didn’t. I’d have been smarter if I had. But then, being an ordinary man myself, I naturally wouldn’t think that ordinary happenings could have anything to do with murders and disappearing bodies.

  Chapter XV

  “When Reggie said I might play for an hour,” she began again, “I looked at my watch. ‘Until fifteen minutes to four,’ I warned him, and went into the living room and explained that I was going to play in Reggie’s place for a while.

  “Mrs. Duefife didn’t like it. She said that we’d pivot, if I played. Rosemary and Mayor Oakman seemed willing to have me; but, before the hand was dealt, Betty-Jean came in wrapped up in a blanket and out of breath from running.

  “‘Isn’t this storm terrible?’ she asked, while she was pushing the door shut.

  “‘It is, indeed,’ Mayor Oakman answered, ‘if it necessitates the sort of garment—or garb—that you are wearing. You should have a papoose strapped on your back to complete the effect.’

  “Betty-Jean’s lips quivered and she pulled the blanket off. ‘I didn’t bring any things for rain,’ she said. ‘I haven’t even an umbrella here.’

  “‘Noah had no umbrella,’ Mayor Oakman said. ‘But he throve.’

  “By this time the poor kid was just about limp from insults and surprise. ‘Well, but what’s the matter?’ she said.

  “I thought that Mayor Oakman was being so rude because she had dared criticize anything, even a howling thunderstorm, in his beloved county. But Rosemary explained.

  “‘We are worried about Kent, Betty-Jean,’ she said. ‘He’s gone to Ferras. And while we are sure he wouldn’t start to come home around a dangerous mountain road with a storm threatening, still I suppose whenever anyone comes in we all hope it will be Kent.’

  “Betty-Jean questioned in that polite little way of hers, ‘Why doesn’t someone telephone to Ferras and inquire at the hotel, or at the garage, or somewhere, whether Kent has left town?’

  “‘A brilliant idea,’ Mayor Oakman said. ‘The telephone wires blew down with the first gust of wind on the mountain.’

  “‘But the lights are all on,’ Betty-Jean observed.

  “I think she believed that the lights came over the telephone wires. But Mayor Oakman couldn’t conceive of such stupidity, so he explained that our power line came from several miles south of Tumboldt.

  “‘I beg your pardon,’ she apologized, when he gave her a chance to speak again. ‘I should have said that the telephone wires aren’t all down, either. I telephoned to Judge Shively when the storm began. I was frightened, and thought that he might be, and——’

  “‘Frightened!’ Mayor Oakman scoffed. ‘I never thought that a daughter of mine would be afraid of a little lightning.’

  “‘I’m not, Father,’ she said. ‘It is the wind I’m afraid of, and the thunder. Shall I try getting Ferras now?’

  “‘If you like,’ Mayor Oakman answered. ‘But try hard.’

  “He was my host, so I simply got up from the table and went over to Betty-Jean, who was trying to ring Ferras, and explained to her that the cottage to cottage telephones weren’t connected with the outside wires.

  “Mayor Oakman said, ‘We are waiting for you, Brigid, if you please.’

  “I longed to say, ‘Wait hard.’ But, after all, there is something about the man that prevents one from piping insults at him, so I said, ‘Sorry. I’ll get Reggie. Do you mind?’ and went into the kitchen before the thunder gave him an opportunity to answer.

  “Reggie had opened a can of ham and a bottle of pickled onions and was making sandwiches. Arguing with him was useless.

  “When I returned to the living room I was glad to see that Betty-Jean had taken my place. I couldn’t have stuck it, playing with Mayor Oakman the way he was snapping his cards down on the table and gloating and quarreling.

  “I picked up some magazines and read a story or two; then I noticed Rosemary, who was dummy then, standing at the window.

  “The air was still gray with rain, but clouds were drifting away from bright blue patches of sky. Rosemary was surprised at the storm’s clearing so soon. I looked at my watch. It was twenty-five minutes past three. That made more than an hour since the wind had begun and rather a long storm for this country.

  “I believe,” she said, speaking to all of us, ‘that I’ll get Acrasia and ride over now to see what has happened on Tumboldt.’

  “Mayor Oakman jumped right up. ‘An excellent idea. Splendid!’ he agreed. ‘
I’ve a rubber slicker you can wear. Just a moment.’

  “He went into the storeroom and returned with that big black coat of his and held it for Rosemary. ‘Don’t take any undue risks,’ he was saying, when Twill opened the front door and came in.

  “‘Where are you going, Rosemary?’ he asked. ‘Why are you putting on that thing?’

  “Mayor Oakman explained. Twill went into one of his worst rages.

  “‘You can’t do it,’ he said. ‘You can’t send my sister out in a storm to hunt for a big lummox who hasn’t sense enough to keep out of danger.’

  “‘I’m not sending her,’ Mayor Oakman declared. ‘She is going of her own accord.’

  “‘The hell she is,’ Twill said.

  “‘Don’t “hell” me, young fellow,’ Mayor Oakman warned him.

  “‘I’ll “hell” you or any man who’d send my sister out in this weather to satisfy his own old-womanish fears.’

  “‘If you weren’t a cripple,’ Mayor Oakman answered, ‘I’d slap you over,’ and turned and walked to the bridge table where Mrs. Duefife and Betty-Jean were sitting.

  “‘If I weren’t a cripple’—Twill was white and trembling—’I shouldn’t be a coward. I’d walk a few miles to look after my child, if necessary, rather than send a girl——’

  “Mayor Oakman interrupted, ‘If you can’t behave yourself, get out of here.’

  “‘I’m leaving,’ Twill said. ‘I’ll return to Betty-Jean’s friend. Stout fellow. Affectionately minded, too—at least when he’s blotto. Ugh, Betty? “Sweet little Betty-Jean,” he said, though thickly. Fancies himself as a temptation to women, doesn’t he, Betty?’ “Betty-Jean looked at Twill and then around at all of us with an utterly stupefied expression on her face.

  “Mayor Oakman asked, ‘Who is he talking about, and what? Do you know, Betty-Jean?’

  “‘No, I don’t, Father,’ she answered, sort of breathlessly. ‘Unless this is a joke of some sort——’

  “‘A joke,’ Twill said. ‘But not funny. I went to Judge Shively’s cottage just now, looking for you, Betty, and found instead this—well, this son of a judge.”