Death in Donegal Bay

by William Campbell Gault

  “That’s right. You’re not a—a cop, are you?”

  “No. An attorney. I’ll see him in the morning.”

  Corey was waiting for me in the motel parking lot. “Jeff must be back,” he said. “The dune buggy is parked in front of his place. Should we tell Mr. Detterwald?”

  “No. He’d just rant and rave. I’ll go over and talk with Jeff. You stay here.”

  It was the house closest to the beach on Surf Lane, he told me. “Now, watch that tongue of yours. They’re a husky pair.”

  “I’ll be careful, Papa,” I promised.

  The place was a sun-bleached structure of rough timbers and twelve-inch boards, set several feet above the ground on concrete blocks. A light glowed dimly through the two front windows.

  There was no bell; I knocked.

  Jeff opened the door. “Mr. Callahan! Did Uncle Duane send you?”

  I shook my head. “Do you know the sheriff sent out a call to pick you up?”

  “The sheriff? Why? Come in.”

  It was a one-room-and-bath house, smelling of fish. On a camper’s gasoline stove set on a table in one corner, a bulky young man with a crew cut was stirring a pot of stew.

  “This is Ted Johnson,” Jeff said. “This is Brock Callahan, Butch.”

  I nodded a greeting.

  “A pleasure,” Butch said, and put a cover on the pot.

  “The sheriff is cooperating with the feds,” I explained to Jeff, “about that narcotic arrest last night. You weren’t involved, I know, but it was your boat that was used. They questioned Mike again.”

  His friend said, “I think you’d better check in with the sheriff, Jeff. I’ll go with you, if you want me to.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Jeff said. He looked at me. “We never left the beach. We were fishing up at the Puerta pier. Thank you for coming, Mr. Callahan.”

  “You’re welcome. Jeff, make up with your uncle. Man, you are his pride and joy!”

  He took a deep breath. “I will. Damn that Anthony! Laura was right about him. Do you know where she is? She isn’t at the house.”

  “She’s up with your Aunt Daphne, crying and waiting.”

  “I’ll stop there and tell her I’m home,” he said. “Let’s go, Butch.”

  The dune buggy was already climbing the road to the bluff when I rejoined Corey.

  I told him where Jeff was going and that he was going to stop in at the Detterwald house. “Tell Duane that. I’m going to my room and take off my shoes and watch TV. I’ve had too long a day for a forty-year-old man.”

  I was watching “Hill Street Blues” when Corey knocked on my door.

  “I gave Mr. Detterwald your message,” he told me, “but he’s still in his office. I’m going to stay up for a while and keep an eye on him.”

  “You’re not getting paid to watch him,” I said. “Make out your report for Mrs. Baker and go to bed.”

  “Later,” he said. “I like Mr. Detterwald. I don’t want him to get into any trouble.”

  Corey might wind up with four employees someday. But he would never turn into a Max Kronen.

  I tried to stay awake to see if there was any new development in the case on the eleven o’clock news, but my eyes refused to cooperate. Corey had the room next to mine. I didn’t hear any sound from there before I fell asleep.

  It was three minutes before two o’clock when I was awakened by a window-rattling crashing sound that seemed to come from the foot of the bluff. I got up and opened the door and looked out. All I could see was fog.

  Corey’s door opened and he came out to the runway. “What was it?” he asked.

  “It sounded like a car went off that road to me. Maybe we’d better phone the highway patrol.”

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “Get your sleep, teach.”

  “What time did you get to bed?” I asked him.

  “At one o’clock. Mr. Detterwald was still in his office, but I couldn’t stick it out. It’s too cold.”

  I went back to bed. At seven-thirty, he knocked on my door. “Hungry?” he asked. “I’ve got some instant coffee and doughnuts.”

  “Give me a couple of minutes. Did you phone the highway patrol?”

  “I did. They said they’d check it. Let’s eat in my room. It’s nicer than this one. The furniture is newer.”

  “I’m not on an expense account,” I explained.

  We were on our second cup of coffee when we heard the sound of a siren coming from the direction of the bluff. We went out to the runway. We could see the red light flashing as the police car came down the winding road.

  About a half a block from where we stood, a man and a woman in running clothes were looking down at the body of a man. He was lying on the sand across the street from Duane’s office.

  “Jesus!” Corey said. “Do you think—”

  “Let’s find out,” I said.

  It was Mike. He was wearing jeans and a sweat shirt. The sweat shirt was sodden with blood. His eyes were still open, staring blindly up at the murky sky.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  MIKE’S BODY WAS GONE, but two deputies and the local patrolman were still talking to the couple in running clothes when I went over to the tackle shop. Corey was in his room, phoning his report to Felicia.

  Laura was alone in the shop. “Isn’t it awful?” she said. “First Duane—and now this.”

  “Duane?” I asked. “What happened to him?”

  “He went off the road last night. Didn’t you hear the crash?”

  I nodded. “Is he—is he …?”

  “Lucky,” she told me. “He must have been thrown clear before his car hit that big boulder at the bottom. The car was totaled. All Uncle Duane has are facial bruises and a broken nose.”

  I said nothing, thinking thoughts I didn’t want to voice.

  She asked, “Do you think Mike might have been killed by those Mexican friends of his? Maybe they think he double-crossed them. It was so vicious, using a knife!”

  “He was stabbed to death?”

  “Four times in the stomach, according to the patrolman who used our phone.”

  “It could be anybody,” I said. “Do you have the key to Duane’s office? I think I left my car keys in there last night. I can’t find them anywhere else.”

  “I have a key.” She reached under the counter, got a key, and handed it to me.

  The letter opener wasn’t on his desk or in any of the drawers, not in any place I searched in the office.

  I took the key back to Laura and asked her, “Is Duane in the hospital?”

  She shook her head. “He’s home. Did you find your keys?”

  “Yup. You know, you ought to take over the restaurant. Even Mike made a living there. And with the way you can cook—”

  She frowned. “Mr. Callahan, that’s macabre! I mean, it’s so soon after. …” She made a face.

  “It’s a macabre world, Laura,” I told her, “and Mike is one man I can’t mourn.”

  I went back to the motel. Corey was still talking with Felicia. When he had finished, I said, “Anthony was stabbed to death. And that letter opener of Duane’s is missing. I checked.”

  His face stiffened. “That’s none of our business.”

  “Of course it is! Don’t make noises like Max Kronen. If you say nobody is paying us, I’ll punch you in the mouth.”

  “Punch away,” he said. “I am not going to be a party to putting Mr. Detterwald in jail.”

  “He’ll have less chance of going there,” I pointed out patiently, “if he turns himself in. That was his car we heard going off the road last night. The car was totaled. All Duane suffered was a broken nose and facial bruises. I’m going up to his house.”

  He looked up at the bluff. “You’re probably guessing right. But I won’t be a part of it. Mrs. Baker told me that I’m through here, now that Jeff and Laura are back together.” He grimaced. “I’m sick! I should have stayed out there longer last night.”

  “No! You did more than duty ca
lled for. I’ll see you back in town.”

  “Right,” he said dully. “Luck.”

  He had started with a wife-tailing job and wound up in a murder case. His parents might reconsider their decision to let him go his own way. Not that it mattered; he was his own man now and would make his own decisions.

  I checked out of the motel and drove up the winding road. The nagging thought came to me that Corey was right. It was none of my business. But I was no longer in business, and my intent was to advise Duane, not to expose him.

  “Well,” Daphne said, when she opened the door. “Another of the revelers! You don’t look hung over.”

  I didn’t ask what she meant. I, too, was a husband. “I’ve been drinking black coffee all morning,” I explained. “How is Duane doing?”

  “Better than he deserves. He’s upstairs. It’s the bedroom at the far end of the hall.”

  It was a large bedroom with double bathrooms. Duane looked doll-size in the enormous bed. His broken nose was taped, his left eye was swollen shut, his left cheek badly lacerated. In my Sherlockian view, he had been worked over by a mug or a pug with a heavy right hand.

  “Are you going to make it, tiger?” I asked him.

  “Hell, yes! I’m just resting. I’ll be on my feet before tonight.”

  “Mike won’t,” I said.

  His eyes glazed. “I heard about it. Somebody got to him with a knife. Maybe one of his narc friends?”

  “Maybe. Were you drunk, or was it the fog?”

  “Both,” he said. His voice was guarded.

  “Crashing into that rock at the foot of the cliff,” I went on in my dumb but dogged way, “I can’t understand how you walked away from that.”

  His voice was dead even. “I wasn’t in the car when it hit the rock. I got thrown out halfway down.”

  I smiled at him.

  “What is this?” he asked. “Are you playing cop for the insurance company—or what?”

  “I’m playing friend, Duane. Did you lose your letter opener? I couldn’t find it in your office.”

  “What the hell were you doing in my office?”

  “Looking for the letter opener.”

  “That’s how you play friend, accusing me of murder? Get out of here!”

  I shook my head. “I came as a friend, and I came to talk sense. They’ll find that letter opener. They’ll match it up with the stab wounds. The reason you weren’t in the car when it hit the rock is that you weren’t in it when it went over the edge of the road. They’ll put it all together, Duane.”

  “You’re crazy!” he said. “You’re absolutely bananas!” He pointed at his face. “You think Mike did this to me?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell it to the cops,” he said. “But get out of here. Friends like you I don’t need.”

  “I’m not going to the cops, I said. “I’m not going to tell them you threatened me with that letter opener, or that you later told me you would stick it in Mike’s throat. And you’re not going to tell them that, either. You are going in with your attorney and tell them the way it happened. Unless you are as dumb as Mike was, and I don’t think you are. Trust me, Duane.”

  “Trust you? Either I squeal on myself or you’ll squeal on me. You call that trust? That’s a threat.”

  “You weren’t listening. I’m not going to turn you in. If you decide not to turn yourself in, I’m going home. You can lie here and wait for the sheriff.”

  He said nothing, looking at me thoughtfully.

  I told him, “Corey stayed outside your office until one o’clock last night in that cold. He likes you. He was worried about you. He stayed out there freezing.”

  “He’s a good kid,” Duane said quietly.

  “So am I. I’m on your side.”

  Silence for seconds. And then he said, “That bastard! He came to the door just before I was ready to go home. He said, ‘Come out here, Weasel, and get what’s coming to you. You blew the whistle on me, you slimy midget. Come out here where the sand will soak up your blood.’”

  “That would have been a smart time to pick up the phone on your desk and dial nine-one-one,” I said.

  “I was mad and drunk. I was not thinking smart.”

  “Did he hit you first?”

  He pointed at his nose. “Right here. And I stuck the opener into his belly and he got a couple more shots in while I stuck him again. And then he went down.”

  “And then,” I finished for him, “you got in your car, still drunk and dazed, and headed for home in the fog—and went over the edge.”

  “You mean I should lie about that part?”

  I nodded. “We may be citizens, Duane, but we’re not saints. You didn’t even remember most of it until right now, when you phoned your attorney.”

  “Okay,” he said. He reached over to the bedside table and picked up the phone.

  I went downstairs. Daphne was waiting there. She asked, “Did he admit it?”

  “He did. He’s phoning his attorney. Did you know?”

  “Not last night,” she told me. “Not until ten minutes ago, when I took the garbage out—and saw the letter opener in the garbage can. Has he got a case, Brock?”

  “I think so. Self-defense. Mike attacked him with two lethal weapons, according to California law—his fists.”

  “Will you stay around for a while?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  His attorney came with a plainclothes officer about forty-five minutes later. The officer was probably a deputy. They went upstairs. Daphne and I sat in the living room, drinking coffee and thinking our separate thoughts.

  About half an hour later, they came down the stairs again. The detective left; the attorney came into the living room. He was classy, a tall, English-type guy, wearing a virgin-wool suit in some rough textured weave. I’ve forgotten his name.

  “It looks promising,” he told Daphne. “The federal narcotics officers are willing to testify that Duane was working with them. And the sheriff told me, off the record, that this Anthony person has had several assault charges filed against him.”

  When he left, Daphne said, “Promising, but not certain.”

  “To doctors and lawyers,” I explained, “promising means certain. But if they said certain, they couldn’t charge as much.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She stared at the floor. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but I can’t feel sad because Mike’s dead.”

  “It’s a feeling we share,” I said. “Go up and solace your husband. I’m going home.”

  She kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks for everything, Brock.”

  Corey’s job was finished, and Kronen had gone home. My quest had been interrupted; it might never be successful. Mr. Ultimate Morality of Veronica Village had been stymied by Mike’s death; his war with Alan Baker was temporarily at a halt. And Alan would no longer have cause to worry about Mike and Felicia. He had benefited the most from the whole sordid affair, almost as if he had engineered it.

  What in hell was any of it to me? Baker had come out on top and Duane might be headed for the slammer. Fine work, peeper!

  It was noon, but I wasn’t hungry. This might be one of the days when Bernie ate lunch in his office. I drove to the station.

  He was there, eating a sandwich. “Pastrami and cheddar cheese,” he told me. “Want one?”

  “No, thanks. I came for soul food.”

  “You’ll have to go further down Main Street to find that. What’s bugging you now?”

  I sat in the chair next to his desk. “Mike Anthony was killed last night.”

  “I know. So?”

  “I knew who did it. I convinced him to confess, which he did. It was self-defense, so he might get off, but what if he doesn’t? A creep is killed, and a citizen might go to the can for it.”

  “And you feel guilty about that? It is illegal for goys to feel guilty. That’s restricted to my tribe.” He smiled at me. “Brock, don’t think too much. It discombobulates you. Instinct, that’s you
r strength. Go with your strength!”

  “I guess you’re right. I have a feeling I know who killed Luther Barnum, but I can’t prove it. When the showdown comes, I might need you to go along.”

  He smiled again. “I’ll be ready. That’s what friends are for.”

  “Thanks for the soul food,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  BERNIE WAS AN ALLY. Bernie was a comfort. Though we squabbled with each other like victims of an unfortunate marriage, when push came to shove, as it had in the past, Bernie was there to support me.

  He didn’t often approve of my investigative techniques, and I often grew impatient with his rigid bureaucratic code. I had to remind myself that he was the law; his code of conduct was determined by that.

  And I had to admit that he was more perceptive than I, more careful to avoid rash judgments and emotional decisions. As I have said too often before, we yo-yos have to follow our instincts.

  From his office, I drove down to Rubio’s. The Judge was back on his bench.

  “Are you feeling better?” I asked him.

  “Much better, thank you. Are you buying?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “A bottle of Beck’s,” he said to Rubio.

  Rubio looked at me. “A double bourbon,” I said, “with a dash of water. And whatever you want, on me.”

  He served us and poured himself a cup of coffee. He asked, “Have you learned anything new on what happened to Luther?”

  “Nothing certain. But I have a hunch. That’s mostly what I work on. You must have noticed that I am not an intellectual.”

  Rubio shook his head. “I never noticed that.”

  The Judge said, “You graduated from Stanford. That is quite possibly the finest university west of Massachusetts. What you mean is that you are not one of those pretentious men who has been educated beyond the limit of his intelligence.”

  “This hunch you got,” Rubio asked. “Do you want to name a name?

  “Not yet. I could be wrong.”

  The Judge said, “I would be willing to wager eight to your three that you are right. Is it connected with what happened in Donegal Bay last night?”

  “Peripherally,” I said.