Death in Donegal Bay

by William Campbell Gault

  If what Luther had known about Farini had caused his death, Lucy had been his informant. The knowledge she had must have implicated Allingham. Why else would he have sent her away? And as the judicial assemblage at Rubio’s Rendezvous had decided, the motive for the untimely demise of Luther Barnum was not his secret knowledge of complicated financial shenanigans.

  The biggest threat to a man so obsessed with his pseudo-Puritan morality would be an attack on his own morality. Where was Lucy?

  I was driving up Reservoir Road, heading for home, when I realized that only one person in town might know about Lucy’s background, and I was about to drive past his house. I turned in at the Baker driveway.

  Alan answered the door and looked at me coldly. “If you came to see Felicia,” he said, “she isn’t home.”

  “Why would I come here to see Felicia? Make sense, man!”

  “She told me about the tête-à-tête at your house. She told me about that lie you told her.”

  “What lie?”

  “That I had hired that Kronen character to check out Mike Anthony.”

  I said calmly, “The lie was hers, not mine. I told her Farini had hired Kronen and that Kronen had switched to Allingham. I told Farini the same thing—and I am sure he told you.” I smiled at him. “That’s not why you’re miffed. There was no hanky-panky, Alan. Our housekeeper was home.”

  He said stiffly, “The thought of hanky-panky never entered my mind.”

  “Like hell it didn’t. I am a happily married man and I intend to stay that way. I came here for only one reason. I am trying to locate Lucy Barnum. I hoped you might be able to help me with that.”

  He looked surprised. “Did she quit her job?”

  “No. She is supposed to be vacationing in Hawaii, but I have reason to believe that isn’t true. My only interest in this stinking mess is to find out who killed Luther. I thought you might know of some friends or relatives she might have gone to.”

  He was quiet, possibly considering how much truth he could reveal without self-incrimination. Then: “Both her parents were killed in an automobile accident while she was still working for us. I don’t know of any other relatives, except for Luther. Her parents lived in Florian. She had one friend she used to write to down there.” He frowned. “What was her name? It was a weird one. I remember now; it was Delilah. I’ve forgotten her last name. She was a school librarian.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “How is Corey working out?”

  “Satisfactorily. I’ll say this for him, he’s got something more than muscle going for him.”

  “True,” I admitted. “But it was cruel of you to say it. You don’t realize how sensitive I am. Take care, Alan.”

  Delilah somebody. Florian was a settlement of about twelve hundred citizens in the Ojai Valley. How many school librarians could there be named Delilah in a one-school town?

  It was less than an hour’s drive from here, but school was out for the summer, and it might take some lengthy and discreet questioning to learn Delilah’s last name and her address. The next day would serve as well. The morning would be cooler in the Ojai Valley.

  Jan had to attend a Children’s Home Society meeting that night. I spent the evening reviewing on paper all the things I had learned or suspected since Alan’s initial phone call.

  The adversaries were more distinct now, their animosities more evident. But the motive for the murder of Luther Barnum was still shrouded. There was always the off chance that it had no connection with the Allingham-Baker feud. Murder for a wide variety of reasons was not uncommon on lower Main Street.

  A heavy fog rolled in that night; a hazy overcast lingered when I took off for Florian. The gloom of the overcast was a welcome change. The Ojai Valley has been setting new heat records this summer.

  The town was only about three miles from the freeway exit. The homes were small, but not tract houses. The original inhabitants had migrated from New England and were immune to the California mass merchandising disease.

  I drove to the school first to learn if there were summer sessions. There weren’t. From there, I drove to the only filling station in town.

  I pulled up next to the full-service pumps and told the young attendant to fill the tank and check under the hood.

  There was a soft-drink vending machine in front of the building. “Want a Coke?” I asked him.

  He grinned at me. “If you’re buying, I’m drinking.”

  I went to the machine. He put the automatic cut-off nozzle into the filler pipe and came to the front of the car to lift the hood.

  “Jesus!” he said, staring at the engine.

  I handed him his Coke. “Nice, huh?”

  “Oh, yes! What god hath wrought this? Mullaney, Meyer, Spelke?”

  “Mostly Spelke. Mullaney wired that capacitative-discharge ignition. The blower is a Meyer X-9.”

  He shook his head in wonder. “And I thought my Roney Chev was a hot number! Do you live around here, or just passing through?”

  “Passing through,” I told him. “I sell textbooks and I took over this area last week. I came to see your school librarian. I didn’t realize you don’t hold summer sessions here.”

  “It’s too hot,” he explained. “You hit a lucky day. But Miss Kent lives in town. She’s one of our customers. Couldn’t you talk with her at her house?”

  “Delilah Kent?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “We have her address in the office. I’ll get it for you.”

  The address he gave me was that of a small frame house in a section of small frame houses on Hampshire Street. There was no California stucco in sight.

  A fleshy, middle-aged woman in tight shorts and a bulging halter was watering her gray lawn next-door as I went up the walk.

  “Miss Kent isn’t home,” she called to me, “if that’s who you came to see.”

  “Will she be back soon?” I asked. “I work for the Noel Publishing Company and we have a new fall list that I am sure would interest her. We’ve added some fiction this year.”

  “She didn’t say exactly when she’d be back,” the woman said. “One of her former high-school friends came down from Veronica Village and the two of them went off on a camping trip together.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I was walking back to my car when she called, “Wait! I just remembered. There’s a school-board budget meeting Friday night and she told me last week she would have to attend that.”

  “Thank you again,” I said. “I’ll phone her on Friday to check before I come back. You’ve been having some miserable weather, haven’t you?”

  “Have we ever! Delilah and her friend decided it had to be cooler up in the mountains.”

  And safer, too, I thought. Another temporary dead end. There was no place to go but home. I dropped in at the station on the way back, but Bernie wasn’t there; he was in court.

  I had a new liar to add to the list—Joan Allingham. Unless her father had lied to her. Everybody was trying to break into my act.

  “How about an omelet?” Mrs. Casey asked when I got home. “A nice ham-and-cheese omelet?”

  “Splendid! Prefaced by a martini?”

  “Each to his own,” she said. “You make your martini. I’ll stick with my regular.”

  The overcast drifted away; the sun came out. It was too hot to run and too soon after lunch to swim. It was dangerous to swim right after eating, my mother had often warned me. It led to cramps. That was probably a myth now, but there were very few things that my mother had told me that were not true.

  She had died at the age of fifty-nine. The good die young.

  I stretched out on a chaise longue in the shade. The weariness of frustration was bone-deep in me. But I wasn’t about to quit. That, too, my mother had taught me.

  I was dozing when the phone rang. It was Corey. “I’ve been talking with Mr. Detterwald. I think that you had better come up here tonight. Get here before dark.”

  “Why?”

  “Something he
avy is going down. The narcs are in town.”

  “I’ll be there,” I promised him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  WHEN JAN CAME HOME, I told her, “We’re eating early tonight. Corey phoned from Donegal Bay. I’m going up there after dinner.”

  “It’s about Mike Anthony, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  “I talked with Daphne on the phone this morning,” she explained, “and she told me Duane wasn’t fit to live with. He’s furious about the way Mike is acting.”

  “He has reason to be. His idiot friend has finally gone too far. I’ll be seeing Duane, too.”

  “Good,” she said. “You can bring back those samples that Daphne has decided are not for her.”

  My Jan, my practical Jan, a sensible woman in a crazy world.

  The sky was unclouded, the sun still in command, when I drove up to Donegal Bay. In the east, the pale disc of a nearly full moon promised us light for tonight.

  If something heavy going down was what I thought it was, Mike had picked the wrong night for it. He was leading with his overhand right again.

  Both Detterwald cars and one other were on their driveway. I stopped there first.

  Duane came to the door. “We’re just having our coffee,” he told me. “Join us.” He led me to the living room at the rear of the house.

  Daphne was sitting on a couch in front of a coffee table. Laura was looking out a full-length window that faced the sea. She didn’t turn around when we came in.

  “Coffee?” Daphne asked.

  I nodded. “Black, please.”

  Laura turned, nodded at me, tried to smile—and left the room.

  “God damn that Jeff!” Daphne said. “He doesn’t deserve her.”

  Duane told me, “She said that Mike was using the boat tonight. I alerted the narcs.”

  “Is Jeff going with him?”

  “We don’t know,” Duane said. “Laura hasn’t seen him all day. Corey’s out looking for him now. He’s a sharp kid, that Corey, isn’t he?”

  “He is.”

  “A sharp kid,” Daphne said contemptuously, “working for Alan Baker. A sharp, crooked kid.”

  “No!” I said.

  She handed me my coffee. “Pardon me! But anybody who would work for Alan Baker is on my shit list.”

  “Calm down, Daphne,” Duane said wearily.

  “Look who’s talking,” she said. “Look who’s talking calm down.”

  I sipped my coffee. Duane glared at his wife.

  Daphne said, “I apologize, Brock. It’s been a bad day. Duane and his stupid loyalties—first Mike and now Jeff.”

  “I can’t think of Duane as stupid,” I said, “and I’ve never considered loyalty a vice.”

  She smiled. “Damn you, you’re so—so—”

  “Loyal,” Duane said. “Finish your coffee, Brock, and let’s get the hell out of here. We’ll take my car.”

  “While you’re gone,” Daphne said, “I’ll put the samples I’m returning in Brock’s. The day won’t be a total loss.”

  “Women!” Duane said, as we walked to his car.

  “Aren’t they wonderful?” I said. “She’s right, buddy. Sticking with Mike as long as you have is stupid.”

  “Don’t I know it? But did you have to mention it?”

  That was a pair of questions too complicated for me. They seemed to constitute a non sequitur. I didn’t answer.

  Corey was in his room when we got there. He told Duane, “I found Jeff. He and some fat guy with a crew cut are in that shack at the end of Surf Lane. Jeff brought some clothes with him.”

  “I know who he is,” Duane said. “He’s a friend of Jeff’s. They played football together. Jeff isn’t going out with Mike tonight. He’s not that dumb. Did you spot the feds?”

  “Some of them. Two of them are halfway up the bluff with binoculars. At least one of them is in those bushes near the pier. He was carrying a walkie-talkie.”

  “Have you seen Kronen?” I asked him.

  “Not since noon. But I checked Anthony. He’s still in the restaurant.”

  “Let’s go to my office,” Duane suggested. “We can see all the action from the porch. I brought my field glasses. This is the first time I’ve used them since I deserted the ponies.”

  The sun went down, the moon took over. There was no wind; the Pacific was pacific tonight, as smooth as a putting green. Overhead, the nine o’clock plane from San Francisco was heading for Los Angeles. To the south, the lights of a boat suddenly went dark.

  “Probably the coast guard,” Duane guessed.

  A figure was walking along the beach now, heading for the pier. “It’s Mike,” Duane said. “He’s alone.”

  There was the sound of an engine coughing into life, and then a boat came into view as it left the pier. Far out, on the course the boat was taking, a green light flashed on and off, and then a red light. And then we could see nothing but a shadow bobbing on the sea.

  We waited. And waited. And waited some more.

  “Damn it!” Duane said. “I wish I hadn’t listened to my doctor. I need a cigarette. Don’t either of you guys smoke?”

  Corey and I shook our heads.

  Then came the distant droning sound of a helicopter. It grew louder. A glaring spotlight suddenly came to life from the boat on the south, and flares went up and burst in the sky, flooding the area with brilliant light. From the sky, another searchlight was shining down from the helicopter.

  “They got him,” Duane said. “No boat is going to outrun that chopper. Let’s go back to the house. One of the narcs promised that he would phone me.”

  “I’ll stay here,” Corey said. “I’m still working.”

  “I’m sure your client can read about it in the paper,” I said.

  “The paper isn’t paying me,” he said. “I’ll stay here.”

  Duane was silent as we rode up the road to the bluff. He had to be hurting some inside. A long span of loyalty had been breached today.

  His front door opened before we reached it. “What happened?” Laura asked.

  “We’re not sure yet,” I told her. “But Jeff wasn’t with him.”

  “They got Mike,” Duane said. “I’m sure they got Mike. Let’s have a cup of coffee and wait for the call.”

  Again we waited. And waited. Laura stood at the big window, looking down at the beach. Daphne read a book. Duane and I drank our coffee slowly, and waited.

  Finally, I asked, “What’s the phone number of that motel? I’ll find out if Corey’s there.”

  He looked up the number and gave it to me. Corey was there. “What happened?” I asked him. “That fed hasn’t phoned.”

  “I can guess why,” he said. “They blew it! They made their move too soon on the Mexican boat. Before the dope was transferred. They’re holding Anthony for questioning. But where’s their case? He had a right to be out on the ocean. He even had some fishing tackle with him.”

  “Are they still down there?”

  “No. It’s quiet now and I’m going to hit the sack. I’m bushed.”

  “Sleep well, Corey. You earned your rest.”

  “Well?” Duane asked.

  I told him what had happened.

  “That lucky puke!” Daphne said.

  Laura said, “I hope it scares Jeff. I’d better go home now. He might be there.”

  Duane shook his head. “He’s moved in with Butch Johnson.”

  “Sleep here tonight,” Daphne urged her. “You can go down in the morning.”

  “Thank you, no,” Laura said. “You never know with Jeff. I want to be there if he decides to come home.” She left.

  I asked Daphne, “Did you get the samples loaded?”

  She nodded. “You didn’t leave your car keys, so I couldn’t open your deck. They’re piled to the roof in the backseat. But I noticed you have outside rearview mirrors.”

  “I’ll make it,” I assured her, “unless somebody rear-ends me. Thanks for the coffee and the spir
ited dialogue. Why don’t you two kiss and make up?”

  “We will,” she promised. “We always do.”

  Cyrus Reed Allingham would be as unhappy as Daphne was to learn that Mike had not been nailed on a narcotic smuggling charge. If Mike, as was probable, had paid for the dope in advance, he would be unhappier than both of them. Roughly half the money the kids had conned out of Felicia would be lost.

  Unless, of course, Chico Maracho considered a prepaid-but-not-delivered purchase as a debt of honor. Considering his rap sheet, a debt of honor was probably a phrase that Chico didn’t have in his vocabulary. And after the mauling Mike had given him in San Diego, Mike would not rank high on Chico’s priority list of debtors.

  Laura knew that Duane had tipped off the feds. If she told Jeff and he told Mike, there would be more fireworks in Donegal Bay. As Laura had said, you never knew with Jeff. He could now be closer with Mike than he was with her.

  It was after midnight when I got home, but Jan was still up, watching a twenty-year-old western movie on the tube.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Is Corey all right?”

  “He’s fine. He put in a long day at hard labor and is now safely tucked away in his trundle bed. Your former schoolmate almost got picked up by the narcotic boys, but he lucked out.”

  She stared at me. “You can’t mean Duane. Was it Mike?”

  “It was Mike. Duane tipped off the feds but, unfortunately, they moved too fast.”

  “Oh, God!” she said. “If Mike learns that Duane—” She didn’t finish.

  “My thought exactly. I brought the samples back. I’ll unload them in the morning. Let’s go to bed.”

  “You go,” she said. “I want to see how this comes out.”

  “A crappy western? You are the sophisticated lady who sneers at me every time I watch them!”

  “And you are the primitive gentleman,” she countered, “who insists I must finish anything I start. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I took a warm shower and went to bed. The events of the evening tumbled around in my mind and lapsed into dreams I don’t remember now.

  I switched the samples from my car to Jan’s in the morning before breakfast and picked up the morning paper from the lawn. The previous night’s maritime adventure was not covered; they had gone to press before that.