The Desert Lake Mystery

by Kay Cleaver Strahan

  “The pretty girl ain’t even married,” Mac pointed out, some shocked sounding.

  “I heard she was going to be,” Ernie said.

  “What’s he getting at, do you know, Jeff?” Mac asked.

  “I don’t think he knows,” I said.

  Mac asked, “Do you, Ernie?”

  Ernie didn’t answer.

  “Kent was locked up in jail, wasn’t he?” Mac kept at it, insisting.

  “What are you asking me for?” Ernie said.

  “I wasn’t,” Mac said. “I was asking Jeff.”

  “What are you asking him for?” Ernie said.

  Mac gave up at that, of course. I was glad of it. I was sick of the whole subject. Ernie had talked himself out for a month, so nothing much more was said. In town I dropped the boys off at their places and went on to the hotel.

  Bert Thalen, the day clerk, came to the door to meet me bursting with bad news.

  “Oakman and the lady detective skipped out by plane this morning,” he said. “Some think he’s paying plenty for the ride. Good-looking dame, at that.”

  I hate a man who can’t stand up for his friends. And, to make it official, I told him that I knew for a fact that they had gone to track down the criminals and that arrests would be made within twenty-four hours.

  “Awful disgraceful, ain’t it?” Bert said. “Joe’s got three bodies over to his place now. Some say there’s several others missing. Joe won’t have room for them, if they find them. Did you ever hear of such a thing? You can’t blame Brigid O’Dell for being scared to go on to Hay Patch. She’s stopping here. Locked in room three. She said to tell you. Some think that Oakman might——”

  I’d been counting ten. If I’d counted twenty I’ll bet I’d have knocked him for a goal. But Bert is a nice fellow, in his way, so I just gave him some advice, for his own good, and went on upstairs to Brigid’s room.

  She opened the door looking terrible but kind of cute in bright blue pajamas and holding a yellow paper in her hand.

  “St. Dennis is intuitive,” she said, while she was locking the door again. “I got this from him this morning. I wouldn’t go down to answer the telephone so Curly brought it over to me from the station. Curly is sweet.”

  I took the paper and read, written in pencil:

  “Pineapple Supreme.

  “Freckles.

  “Black teeth.”

  I found me a chair to sit down.

  “You’re reading the wrong side,” she said. “That’s my list. Clues. New ones. Turn it over.”

  I turned it over and read, “Crambe repetita.” I took Latin in high school. I thought I’d forgotten the doggone stuff. But I hadn’t, though right then I wished I had.

  After a while, noting that she was still talking, I said, “What?”

  “‘What?’” she said, very vexed. “I knew you weren’t listening. How much did you hear? Where did you leave off listening?”

  “At your papa’s message. At the cabbage,” I said, adding, “Warmed over.”

  “No,” she said. “It means any unnecessary repetition. I just told you. St. Dennis and I use it instead of saying that we are fond of each other. He has sensed that something is wrong and has sent me this to remind me that he likes me and is standing by if I need him. And I do.” To my horror she began crying a little. “I do need him. I want terribly to send him a telegram saying that I have a slight earache.”

  “Oh, dear me!” I said, sounding exactly like Reggie and not caring. “What next? What next? When did it start aching, honey?”

  “It doesn’t ache,” she said. “But he’d come by plane. He’s been silly about my ears ever since that mastoid performance.”

  “I should hope so,” I said. “I’ll run right down and get the wire off for you.”

  “Don’t you dare! I wouldn’t worry him like that for anything. But I’ll tell you something I do want you to do for me, Jeff. I sneaked in here last night, telling only Kent and Rosemary. So if you’ll find that revolting, hypocritical, quarrelsome old-—”

  “Adam left town early this morning,” I told her. “He went with Miss MacDonald in the plane.”

  She stopped crying with a scared expression. “But why on earth? She knew that he had a hand in all this. Is she trying to set some trap for him? But he wouldn’t walk into it, or——”

  “Trap?” I said, sounding this time like a frog. “Don’t look that way, Jeff,” she said. “I’m sorry. I suppose that no one could believe, really, that Mayor Oakman murdered anyone—that is, on purpose. But I do think that he had some slick plan and that it all got away from him and that these terrible things happened instead. I’m sure Miss MacDonald thinks so too.”

  “Did she tell you that? When you were riding over here together last night?”

  “Not she. She doesn’t tell. She asks. But all the same——”

  “Crazy as Hades,” I said, with relief.

  “I am not. Coming back from Judge Shively’s cottage last night she managed to make Mayor Oakman confess that he had written to the Judge, without letting any of us know, and asked him to come to Memaloose.”

  “That’s not a confession,” I said. “That’s an invitation.”

  “All the same, he hated admitting it. And he hated admitting that he had told the Judge that Betty-Jean was in love with a worthless, crippled, penniless boy, younger than she was, and had asked the old gentleman to come and see whether he could break off the affair.”

  “Adam was never a great one for telling about his little dodges,” I said.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I think that Miss MacDonald was making a connection between the Judge’s coming here and his leaving.”

  “At that,” I said, “there was a connection. There always is. If a visitor comes to a place he generally goes. Coming, going. To and fro.”

  “Look at it this way, Jeff,” she said. “Do you mind? Early Wednesday morning, say, before anything had happened, the cloudburst, the murder, the disappearances, the one thing that made Wednesday different from other days at Memaloose was that Judge Shively was planning to leave there that evening.”

  “Murdering practically everybody on the place wouldn’t detain the old gentleman,” I said, adding: “Anyway, it didn’t.”

  “No,” she said. “It didn’t. He has gone—somewhere.”

  “With tourists,” I said. “Riding off at leisure before any of the trouble could have started.”

  “If those tourists, as you call them, came to return a piece of luggage to Clyde Shively—then where is that extra piece of luggage?”

  More to change the subject than anything else, I asked: “What did you and Miss MacDonald and Adam find when you were in the old Judge’s cottage last night?”

  “Mayor Oakman and I weren’t in it,” she said. “When we got to the front door, Miss MacDonald asked if we’d mind letting her go in alone, first, for a few minutes. Even he could scarcely refuse that, though it made him furious. He and I stayed outside. When she finally came out she said that she wanted to go on to Twill’s cottage. But before she spoke to us, she heard him raving and roaring at me, and I’m glad of it.

  “No. Nothing that mattered at all,” she said, answering my questions. “I considered him maniacal, as I told him, just before I put my fingers in my ears. He was holding my wrists and shouting at me when Miss MacDonald came out of the cottage. He didn’t see her and I didn’t warn him. I was glad to have her get an impression of the handsome Mayor’s more informal manners. Now don’t start scolding. Come on. We’re going to Memaloose.”

  “Hay Patch,” I corrected her.

  “Memaloose.”

  “Adam’s not at Hay Patch now,” I told her, thinking she had forgotten.

  “See that door?” she said.

  I did. It was the size of a door, square in front of me, and it led into the next room.

  “I lay there on that dirty carpet last night,” she said, “with my ear to that crack underneath for an hour or more.
Miss MacDonald and Mayor Oakman were talking in that room. I couldn’t hear anything that she said, but of course he roared now and then. The first thing that I heard him say was, ‘Pineapple Supreme!’ He said it as if he were going to be sick, right there.”

  “She shouldn’t have brought up the subject of cooking recipes,” I said.

  “Miss MacDonald is not silly. If she seemed so, she did it on purpose. I rather thought she overdid it—but maybe not. He’d be easier to deal with if he thought she was a fool. At any rate, the next thing he said that I could hear, was, ‘Freckles,’ and, oh, so condescendingly!

  “Nobody could say ‘freckles’ condescendingly,” I told her.

  “I suppose he was talking about mine. Finally, and the last thing I heard him say, was ‘Black teeth.’”

  “He couldn’t have said ‘black teeth,’” I began.

  “Why not? I’ve just said it. You just said it. Why couldn’t he say it?”

  “Oh, well, he must have said ‘back feet’ speaking of the dog, or ‘back East,’ or——”

  “He said, ‘Black teeth.’ His enunciation is excellent. Doubtless he took lessons in public speaking before he went to the Senate. Do you know, Jeff, that is just what he is, himself. One long public speech for any occasion. Sorry. Come on, Angel, we’re going to Memaloose.”

  “No,” I said. “Why? What for?”

  “Maybe we can get ourselves killed and land all cool and cozy in St. Dennis’s cosmic spaces.”

  “Shame on you,” I said. “And I’m not going to take you to Memaloose, Brigid. You needn’t beg. I won’t do it.”

  “When I came into camp yesterday,” she said, “I closed the gate. When I went out to it again to look for you and Kent and saw Mayor Oakman coming, instead, the gate was wide open. That was about two o’clock I think. I was swimming, pushing the canoe across the lake. Afterward I was in the community house telephoning. I couldn’t have seen anyone coming in or leaving during any of that time. Do you think someone did come in and go again, leaving the gate open? Or do you think that the gate swung open by itself?”

  “Gates can and do,” I said.

  “Yes. But they can’t and don’t murder people. Come on, darling, let’s go to Memaloose and have a look at that gate and—other things.”

  Looking at the gate was useless. We opened it and shut it and pushed it a little and didn’t push it, and finally decided that, if the catch wasn’t on it—and Brigid could not remember for certain whether she’d caught it or not—it might have swung open by itself, or that, maybe, it might not have swung open.

  Looking at everything else at Memaloose was worse than useless. Brigid gazed at the lake, sprawling there with the old bruised calico hills upside down in it, and shivered. “If I hadn’t taken the canoe back to the boathouse on Thursday, for no reason except that it made me jittery floating empty out there, Twill couldn’t have come across the lake in it yesterday.”

  “Black wreath,” I said, thinking about Joe’s old hearse crawling up and down that road in the dogged sunshine. “Maybe Adam said ‘black wreath.’ Something will have to be done about a lot of funerals.”

  “He said, ‘black teeth.’ Before that he said, ‘pineapple supreme’ and ‘freckles.’”

  “Could it be barely possible,” I asked, “that poison was found in that pineapple pudding?”

  “No,” she said, “because there wasn’t any pineapple pudding. And no one was poisoned. Turn here, please, Jeff, and drive to Judge Shively’s cottage. I want to go there first.”

  I stopped the car. “Brigid,” I said, “I won’t have it. I won’t think of letting you snoop around down there in that cottage. I’ve got to put a stop to this some place. Don’t beg. I won’t do it.”

  Chapter XXXVI

  White feathers were drifting around in the bedroom of the Judge’s cottage like cotton drifts lazy through the air in Arizona. It was a queer thing that I should have noticed the butcher knife lying on the floor there before I noticed the feather pillow beside it, cut wide open.

  ‘Tools!” Brigid said, meaning us. “Something was hidden in this pillow,” she went on, sitting down beside it and stirring the feathers until she sneezed. “Why didn’t we think of that? Miss MacDonald must have thought of it the moment I told her about the slip’s being changed. She’s cut it open and taken whatever was in it. Yes, see here, Jeff. This end of the pillow is sewed up with long stitches. Silk thread. Wasn’t there a little sewing-kit in that bag of Clyde Shively’s? Never mind—I’ll look later. No woman would sew a pillow with silk thread.”

  “If it was the first that came to hand?” I suggested.

  “It wouldn’t be.”

  “I’d hardly think a man would sew it at all.”

  “Yes, if he’d hidden something in it. These pillowslips fit tightly—see here? When he pulled the pillow out the slip turned wrong side out. He sewed the pillow up and put his seam down at the closed end of the slip where it wouldn’t show. Now what could he have hidden in that pillow?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “It must have been something small and light. The pillow wasn’t heavy when I was handling it, and it didn’t bulge.”

  “Some rare and precious jewel or gem, I suppose,” I said. “Come on now, Brigid; let’s get out of here.”

  “I’ll bet that it was something Clyde Shively brought with him.”

  “The papers,” I said.

  “What papers?”

  “The papers that always go with murders,” I told her, and picked some feathers out of her hair.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Miss MacDonald wasn’t carrying anything but her big handbag when she came out of here, last night,” she went on. “I’m going to look around.”

  There was nothing for it but to wait while she rummaged through the whole cottage, poking her fingers into every crick and cranny and turning things upside-down. In the little grip she found the sewing-kit with tan cotton and white silk thread in it. She said that the white silk thread was the one used to sew up the pillow. Beyond this single deduction she got nothing for all her trouble, but she made a lot of disorder for me to tidy up again.

  She thought I needn’t bother so much; but I went right ahead so she helped and hung the clothes up, and I put the small grip back in the big one and stood them in the closet where they belonged, and did my best to leave things exactly as we had found them.

  “You think that Miss MacDonald and Mayor Oakman will be returning before long, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said.

  “I should,” she said, and went flipping out-of-doors when I was trying to brush her off.

  As I feared, she was at the wheel of my car and I just had time to jump on the running board before she headed it straight for Twill’s cottage. When we got there instead of going into the cottage, as I had also feared, she went into the garage and, as I’d never even thought of fearing, walked directly to another valise that was standing in there, and opened it.

  Anybody would think that a man’s capacity for being horrified would give out, in time. After living through three certain murders, none of them nice, and one doubtful murder with the body missing, why I should all but keel over because Brigid opened that valise, in a businesslike way, and dragged out another bloodstained pillow and something else white and fluffy, I don’t know. Too many valises, too many pillows, too many bloodstains, too much Brigid being businesslike and knowing where to find things, something made me feel the need of air. I stepped outside and got some, in gasps.

  It wasn’t long before she came out of the garage, still being businesslike by brushing her hands off in a kind of finished though finicky way. “What’s the matter with you now?” she asked, as if different things were always the matter with me.

  “How did you know that grip was in Twill’s garage?” I asked.

  “I put it there,” she said.

  “You did not,” I said. “Don’t say such a thing.”

  �
�But I did. When I tidied Twill’s cottage, Wednesday night, I put the pillow that was on the floor and Rosemary’s frock in that suitcase and set it out in the garage. I didn’t know what else to do with them. I told Miss MacDonald where they were. She has cut a piece out of that pillowslip, and out of the front of Rosemary’s frock and taken them with her. The bloodstains, you know.”

  I still didn’t feel so very good, but I stood up and began trying to pick a few more feathers out of Brigid’s hair.

  “Won’t you please leave my hair alone,” she said, “and listen? If Miss MacDonald believed that Rosemary killed the dog, why should she take the samples of blood to have them analyzed?”

  “A matter of routine,” I said. It just came to me, and it sounded fine, but Brigid said, only, “Yes—maybe,” and folded her legs under her and sat down on them.

  “Miss MacDonald’s taking those bloodstained samples,” she said next, “looks as if she thought that there might be a doubt as to whether Rosemary killed Funny on the pillow. But if Rosemary didn’t shoot Funny, then who did shoot him, and why?”

  “What does the dog matter, now?” I asked.

  “Somebody shot him, for some reason.”

  “Rosemary shot him, for a good reason,” I said.

  “When I found Twill’s body in the canoe,” she said, “I only glanced at it—you know why. But I did see the wound. Could it be coincidence that whoever shot Twill shot him where Rosemary said she had shot him? No—I rather think that gate must have swung open.”

  “Let’s go take another look at it,” I said, and offered to help her up.

  “What’s that all over your fingers?” she asked.

  “You left that iodine bottle uncorked in that bathroom back there,” I told her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It was such a tiny bottle. You must have spilled it all. But that doesn’t look like iodine on your hand.”

  “It said iodine on the label,” I said. “I spilled it all.”

  “Jeff, are my freckles that color?”

  I looked at my fingers. “They are not,” I said. “This stuff is a dull dirty brown. Your freckles are ornamental—kind of gleaming and gay.”