He jerked his glance upward, measuring the height of the bank. It was at least four feet and almost vertical, a straight drop from the top of the bank to the edge of the water, where the sloping mud bottom began to drop, away, gradually at first, and then plunging down out of sight through the tea-colored water. And still there it was, quite plainly seen just under the surface of the water, the track of an automobile tire!
He shook his head. It was just some kid, he thought, playing with an old tire. Hurriedly springing up, he walked over and looked down. And there was another one, just the right distance over and more deeply pressed into the mud than the first, every tread distinct. There wasn’t any doubt of it.
But no, he thought, his mind beginning to react now—not a car. A trailer—a boat trailer. But what fool would try to launch a boat here? It would probably go in upside down, and he’d never get the trailer back on the bank.
But maybe, he decided suddenly, whoever put it down there didn’t want it back on the bank. What he needed was a boat and something to sound with. Turning, he ran back to the car and climbed in.
When he got back to Gulfbreeze Camp, Mildred Talley was lying on the float in a fragmentary bathing suit and blue rubber cap. He waved to her as he went inside the cabin after the rod and his tackle box. Locking the door again, he gathered up the oars and went down to the float to pick out a skiff.
“Hello,” she said, raising on one elbow. “How about a cigarette?”
“Sure.” He dropped the gear in a boat and walked over to her. Pretty, he thought, if she’d give her face a chance. Did she expect to swim in all that make-up? She’d poison the fish.
“You close the lunchroom and go out of business?” he asked.
“Della is up there,” she said. “She’s my sister. Mrs. Skeeter Malone.”
“I see.”
She sat up and took the cigarette, waiting for him to light it. “You just missed your friend.”
He held the match for her. “My friend?”
“Miss Lasater. She just went up the bayou with an outboard.”
“Oh,” he said absently, still thinking about the trailer. The sun was far down against the wall of trees now and he had a long mile to pull with the oars to get back there.
“Maybe you’ll run into her up there. If you go far enough.”
“Is that what she goes up there for? To run into people?”
“I didn’t say that.” She smiled archly. “You did.”
“Maybe she’s painting,” Reno said absently. Why’s she got her harpoon in that black-headed girl? he thought. “It’s impressive country for landscapes.”
“I guess so,” Mildred replied. “Anyway, she spends a lot of time up there. And I’d be the last one in the world to suggest that she was going fishing with Robert Counsel.”
He had been only half listening to her, and the name came slashing into his reverie like a whip. He managed to keep his face still. “Afraid I don’t get you,” he said, puzzled. “Fishing with who?”
She laughed. “I forgot you didn’t come from around here. It was a kind of saying they used to have. Going fishing with Robert Counsel.”
“And not referring to bass fishing, I take it?”
“Not so you could tell it. It meant a girl was up to something she shouldn’t be. Wild parties. That kind of stuff.”
“And who was Robert Counsel?”
“His grandfather used to own all this land around here. The Counselor’s their old house. He lived there with his mother when I was just a kid. And he had a fishing camp or lodge way up the bayou that she didn’t know anything about. I used to hear the older girls talking about it. Ummm, brother!”
“Wonderful what you can do with money,” Reno said.
“It wasn’t only the money. Or the speedboats and the foreign car. He was a smooth job himself. Old family. And good-looking. I used to see him once in a while, but I was just a kid and he never noticed me, of course.”
“And now I suppose he’s married, with three or four kids, an ulcer and a job in the bank?”
She shook her head. “Nobody knows. He’s been gone from here for years. Never did come back after the war.”
“Was he killed overseas?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She stopped and was silent for a moment, gazing out abstractedly over the water. “Somebody who’s well known like that, you hear all kinds of stories about him. You know how it is. He was blinded. He was court-martialed for some silly thing. He lost both legs. A lot of people didn’t like him, anyway. And a few of them hated him, I guess. Like Max Easter.”
“Easter? Oh, the big guy. He hated him?”
She nodded. “Robert Counsel ran away with his wife. Or so they think.” She broke off abruptly. “But I’m keeping you from your fishing.”
So Easter hated him, Reno thought, pulling up the bayou with long strokes of the oars. Maybe he had a lot of enemies around here. Maybe that was the reason he was trying to get in here without anyone’s recognizing him. But why the boat? He swore under his breath and yanked savagely at the oars. I could stop that, he thought irritably. If I want to beat my brains out, why don’t I just wonder what he was doing with a vacuum pump?
The sun was gone from the water by the time he rounded the last bend and the long reach of the bayou stretched out dark and tranquil ahead of the skiff. He pulled over against the shore and began watching, knowing he was close. It was even darker under the trees, but in a few minutes he made out an open space that looked like the camp ground. Easing the boat up against the bank, he located the tire marks just under the surface of the water. Now, he thought.
Pulling a short distance straight out from shore, he let the boat come to rest on the mirror-like surface and set up the casting outfit, tying on a heavy spoon with a treble hook. The first two casts were unproductive. Maybe the water was a little deeper than it looked, he decided. The next time he let the spoon sink until he was sure it was on the bottom before he started his retrieve. This time he hit it. He felt the spoon bump something, hang up for an instant, and jerk free. Casting back to the same place, he hooked it solidly.
Not brush or weeds, he thought, feeling the excitement now. It was too rigid. Slowly he began winding the reel, pulling the boat back over the spot. When the line led straight down into the darkening water he lay flat on the stern of the boat and poked around with the rod tip. It encountered nothing. Still deeper, he thought. Hurriedly slipping the reel off its seat so it wouldn’t get wet, he stretched farther out over the stern, putting his head into the water and extending the full length of his arm and the five-foot tubular steel casting rod. He felt it then. The rod rapped something below him and the sound was unmistakably that of metal against metal. Swinging the rod back and forth, he heard it scrape against steel for two or three feet before he lost contact. He knew what it was—the pipe frame of a boat trailer, the shaft between axle and trailer hitch.
He raised his head and let water run out of his hair while he took a deep breath and considered his find with growing elation. It had to be Conway’s trailer. Nobody else would deliberately push into the bayou something that probably cost well over a hundred dollars, and it proved beyond any doubt that Conway had been up to more than a simple fishing trip.
But what next? He’d have to get a rope to haul it out where he could get a look at it. That was what he would do—go to town in the morning, pick up a piece of light line, and come back here with the boat. It would be easy to swim down and make the line fast to it, go ashore with the other end, and haul it up. Maybe there was some clue … Maybe Conway was on it.
Looking up, he turned his head to estimate the distance from the bank and fix the spot exactly. It was about thirty feet straight out from the tire marks. It was then he saw the boat.
He sat up, startled. It was Patricia Lasater in a skiff less than fifty yards away, pulling down the channel on the oars and looking over her shoulder at him. He had been so intent on his activity he hadn’t heard her. But why hadn’t
she been using the motor he could see on the stern of her boat?
She stopped rowing and the skiff came to rest alongside his. He looked across at her and nodded, busy putting the reel back on the rod and conscious of the water dripping out of his hair onto his clothing.
The brown eyes regarded him with faint irony. “A new method of stalking bass?” she asked.
“No,” he said shortly. “Hung up on some brush. I was trying to work the spoon loose.”
“Oh.” She smiled delightfully, looking very cool and attractive in the blouse and crisp white slacks. “I was afraid you were going to drown. You looked for all the world like a feeding duck.”
Reno was conscious of the baffled irritation of all males caught in something ridiculous by a pretty girl. “Is your motor broken down?” he asked stiffly.
She shook her head. “It’s all right. I was just rowing because I like the bayou at dusk and wasn’t in any hurry.”
That’s possible, he reflected grudgingly. After all, she shouldn’t have any reason to suspect what was down there. He was becoming suspicious of everybody. “Have you been sketching?” he asked, nodding toward the old brief case in the stern of the boat. “The girl at the camp tells me you paint.”
“A little.”
“Oils?”
She nodded. “I teach it at college.”
“Have you been here long?”
“About two months. Did you get your plug loose?”
“No. It’s useless.” He reeled in the rest of the line and yanked straight back through the guides. The line parted. “It’s time to start back, anyway.”
She glanced around at the deepening twilight. “Pass me your anchor rope and I’ll give you a tow with the motor.”
He was up early the next morning, out on the bayou working the shore line with a bass plug. Since he was supposed to be here for the fishing, he had to make it look good. At eight o’clock he changed clothes and went into Waynesport to buy the line. He thought of going to see Howell Gage, but decided to wait until after he had the trailer out. There might be something really important to tell him after he’d had a look at it.
When he got back to camp he remembered he hadn’t bought cigarettes while in town. He walked around to the lunchroom. It was empty, but just as he stepped inside he heard the low sound of voices out in the store.
A woman said something he didn’t catch, and then there was the deadly monotone of Skeeter’s voice. “I tell you she talks too damned much. If you can’t shut her big mouth, I can—” It chopped off abruptly as Reno let the door close.
A woman he hadn’t seen before, came through the doorway at the end of the counter. Della, he thought; Mrs. Skeeter. She was an older version of Mildred, faded a little, and coldly intelligent rather than petulant.
“Yes?” she said.
“Package of cigarettes,” Reno replied. Tough baby, he thought. I wonder if Mac talked to her.
He went back to the cabin. Picking up the tackle box and rod, he got the coil of rope out of the car and went down to the float. He put the rope under the stern seat and shoved off, and as he swung to look up the channel a flash of movement caught his eye. Swinging quickly back, he looked again, and saw it was Patricia Lasater in her skiff, going slowly along the opposite shore near the first turn. When he rounded the turn, some two hundred yards ahead, he looked again. She was nowhere in sight. The whole stretch of the bayou to the next bend was empty.
That was odd. She couldn’t have gone ashore; her boat would still be along the bank somewhere. And she certainly couldn’t have reached the next bend; that was at least a quarter mile away. Then he remembered. There was another of the innumerable arms of the bayou branching off along here somewhere. He had seen it last night. When he pulled abreast of it he saw her. She had just beached her skiff not fifty yards away, inside the entrance, and was climbing out. He suddenly ceased pulling at the oars, and stared in amazement at the man who had just stepped out of the timber along the shore.
He was one of the largest men Reno had ever seen, a gray haired giant whose shoulders had the solid, wedge-shaped look of power and who towered over the girl as if she were a child. He carried a rifle in the crook of his arm and made no effort to help her as she climbed the bank. While Reno watched, they turned and started into the timber, the big man in the lead.
Easter, he thought, remembering Mildred Talley’s description. There couldn’t be two people that size around here. A screwball of some kind, she had said. Just what had she meant by that? Probably, he reflected cynically, anybody who doesn’t chew gum. But why had Patricia Lasater met him up here, and where were they going?
He shrugged, and dug in the oars. There was no use guessing, and he had more important business. There shouldn’t be any interruptions this time.
When he arrived at the spot some twenty minutes later he set up the casting rod again, without the reel, and carefully lined up the tire marks in the mud. Lying flat in the stern he began swinging the rod back and forth below him as he had yesterday. The rod encountered nothing, and after a minute or so of futile search he raised his head, taking another bearing on the tracks. The boat had drifted over a little.
He moved it slightly, using one oar as a paddle, and tried again. Still he met with no success. With vague irritation he raised his-head and looked around, thinking he would have to drop anchor anyway to hold the boat still. But no, it was where he had put it.
Nuts, he thought impatiently, why waste time probing for it? He had to dive anyway. Stepping forward, he dropped the anchor overboard, then looked up and down the desolate stretch of bayou. There was no one in sight. Stripping off his clothes and watch, he dropped quickly over the side. He took a deep breath and let go the gunwhale, swimming straight down. The water was only some ten feet deep, and almost immediately he felt the soft mud bottom under his hands. Moving slowly then, in a widening circle, he put out his arms to keep from bumping the wheels or axle with his head. He had a bad moment when the thought occurred to him again that Conway might be tied to the trailer, but with quick revulsion he shoved it out of his mind.
Once his hand brushed something and he thought he had found it, but it was only the concrete block of the anchor. When his lungs began to hurt he kicked upward and took another breath as his head broke the surface. I couldn’t have been that far off in my bearings, he thought angrily. It’s got to be right here under me.
The truth began to come home to him then. The next dive settled it. Lying on the bottom in the warm, tea-colored water with his hands probing into one of the holes in the mud where the wheels had settled, he knew the answer.
There had been a trailer, or something, here last night, but it wasn’t here any more. Somebody had moved it.
Chapter Eight
HE CLIMBED BACK INTO the boat and dressed, and stared coldly out across the bayou as he thought of Patricia Lasater. So she’d just happened to come along, the way she’d just happened to be with Mac the night he was killed. He cursed, and sculled the boat over against the bank to find the tracks where it had been pulled out. Then he sat and stared. There weren’t any.
The old tracks were still there, but after he’d covered a hundred yards in each direction he knew the trailer had not been pulled up on the bank. It had been moved by boat. But how? None of the skiffs at the camp would support it, even the submerged weight of it. And when he stopped to think of it, how could she have moved it anyway? It would have taken a powerful man to lift that trailer far enough off the bottom to tow it. Well, she knew a powerful man, didn’t she? She was with him right now.
“Back at the camp he took a shower, changed into white slacks and a T shirt, and drove back to Waynesport. Howell Gage was prowling the officer dictating to a pretty brunette. When they were finished, Reno went in and sat down.
“Who’s Robert Counsel?” he asked abruptly.
“An atavism,” Gage said. “Feudal aristocrat washed up on the shore of Twentieth Century democracy. Why?”
“You r
emember Mac was looking for somebody?”
Gage sat down on the corner of his desk and tapped a cigarette against his thumbnail. “Joker by the name of Conway, as I recall. Vickie told me. So you think it was Counsel?”
Reno nodded. “I know it was. What I’m trying to find out is why.” Briefly, he told of Mrs. Conway’s narrow escape and of Mac’s reports.
“How about the description?” Gage interrupted.
“Tall. Gray eyed. Erect way of walking. Cultured sort of voice, with only a trace of southern accent. Very assured, English-public-school manner, fluent Italian—”
“Counsel,” Gage interrupted, his eyes thoughtful. “But he couldn’t have been, around here all this time without being recognized.”
“I realize that,” Reno said impatiently. “But the fact remains. McHugh found out it was Counsel he was after. The telephone call to Mrs. Conway clinches that. He wanted to know those other two things, and when she verified them he was certain. Then Mac was killed. Somebody got Mrs. Conway down here and she was almost killed. So when you add all that up, what do you get?”
“Counsel’s well hidden. Or he’s dead.”
“Right. And either way, somebody’s trying to cover his tracks.” He told of finding the trailer, and of its disappearance after the girl had caught him poking at it with the rod.
“Same girl who was with McHugh that night,” Reno added.
“We’ll have her picked up.”
“No.” Reno shook his head. “Sure, Vickie can identify her, if she is the same one. But just suppose it’s not, or that she refuses to talk? It’s just Vickie’s word against hers as to what she and Mac were doing together. And if she’d wanted to clear anything up, she’s had ten days already.”
“I see what you mean.” Gage nodded, deep in thought. “But I’d better warn you. You can get yourself in a jam. First, you didn’t report the attack on Mrs. Conway. And now you’re harboring a fugitive. That girl is still wanted—”
Go Home, Stranger Page 7
