I said, "My name is—"
"Ron, it's Doreen. The Condor's Nest was broken into and there's been a murder." That was the operator.
The deputy, who sounded exasperated, said, "Doreen, get off the line, please."
"Yes, sir," was her snappy reply. I didn't hear a click, so I figured she was still there.
"Sir, may I help you?" asked the deputy.
"My name is Nick Williams. My father owns the Condor's Nest on the Roosevelt Highway about twelve miles south of Carmel. Do you know the place?"
"Sure. Real modern. All windows."
"That's it. Some time after 2 this morning, the house was broken into, ransacked, and, from what I can tell, the intruder was stabbed."
A gasp on the line confirmed that Doreen hadn't disconnected.
The deputy sighed. "Have you disturbed the house at all?"
"Not too much. As soon as I hang up, we'll be waiting outside."
"We?"
"Yes. I'm here with my friend, Carter Jones."
"Oh, right. Where's Mrs. Hughes?"
"I gave her the week off. She left around 5:30 yesterday afternoon."
"You and Mr. Jones go outside and wait for me there."
"Will do."
The deputy hung up. A second or two later, I heard Doreen disconnect as well.
. . .
We were both leaning against the Sunbeam, when a truck came barreling down the gravel drive. It was the Ford truck that Mrs. Hughes had driven off in the day before but she was in the passenger seat. A dark man with a thick black beard was driving. They parked in the space next to the Studebaker truck and both got out.
Ignoring us, the two made their way to the stone porch.
I called out, "Don't go in there. It's a crime scene."
Mrs. Hughes paused while Mr. Hughes kept going and disappeared inside the house. She looked at me for a long moment.
I shook my head and asked, "Ever heard of tampering with evidence? It's a felony. Two to five years, if you're lucky." I had no idea if any of that was true, but, as a licensed P.I., I did have an obligation to warn her.
She glared at me and then followed her husband.
"What's that about?" asked Carter.
"Search me."
In a whisper, he said, "Later and thoroughly."
I grinned and nodded. "You better not be making a promise you don't intend on keeping."
He leaned in closer and explained, in detail, how he planned on keeping his promise.
. . .
About twenty minutes later, a Monterey County Sheriff's car pulled in and parked behind the Hughes's truck. Three men got out. One of them was carrying a camera. Another was carrying a large case. They were both in trousers, coats, and wearing ties. A third man, the driver, got out after a long moment. He was wearing a sheriff's uniform. He was mildly handsome in a wind-blown sort of way. I pegged him at about 35 but he looked older. I figured that living by the coast did that to a man. He had chestnut hair, light brown eyes, and a generous mouth. He stood a little over six feet and was mostly trim, with the trace of a beer gut beginning to show just over his belt. Putting on his hat, he made his way to where we were standing by the Sunbeam.
Without introducing himself, he asked, "Why is the Hughes truck here?" He sounded like the Deputy Forrester I'd talked to so I assumed he was.
I shrugged. "After I hung up with you, they came driving up. They disappeared into the house and I haven't seen them since."
His eyes flashed and his nostrils flared. "Why'd you let them in? Didn't you tell them it was a crime scene?"
I nodded. "Sure did and mentioned it was tampering with evidence and how that was a felony."
"And they've been in there all this time?"
"Yep. And, based on what we've heard, it sounds like they are cleaning up."
He spit on the ground, said, "Damn it," and then charged inside.
After a long moment, Mr. Hughes emerged from inside the house. He was handcuffed and being escorted by Deputy Forrester. Mrs. Hughes brought up the rear. She was crying.
"Frank," said the deputy as they walked towards his car, "you should know better than that. I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to take you in."
Looking at us, he said, "Why don't you arrest those two? You know what they were doing after we left."
The deputy shook his head. "That's neither here nor there." He opened the passenger-side back door of his car and rolled down the window. He removed the handcuffs and then pushed the man into the backseat. "Gimme your right hand."
Mr. Hughes complied.
The deputy put one of the cuffs on the man's wrist and then attached the other cuff to the frame of the door. Turning to Mrs. Hughes, he said, "You're in it, too, Roberta. Hollis is on his way and he'll take the two of you back up to Carmel and get you booked in." Looking over at me, he added, "Bail shouldn't be too high, but Judge Wilkins won't be able to hold an arraignment hearing until Monday morning, at the earliest. So you'll both have to stay in the lockup until then."
Mr. Hughes said, "All we was doin' was our jobs. Dr. Williams—"
The deputy said, "Save it for your attorney. I caught you in plain sight." He paused for a moment and glanced back at me. "Of course, the judge won't take just my word for it. I'm sure Mr. Williams and Mr. Jones will have to testify that Mr. Williams warned you not to go inside." He nodded thoughtfully. "I'm sure that'll be the most important point that the judge will consider."
Mr. Hughes grunted but didn't say anything.
The deputy walked over to us and said, "You all wait right here. Let me have a look-see and then I'll be back to take your statements." With that, he turned towards the house and made his way inside.
I walked over to the deputy's car and said, "Why'd you go in there?"
Mr. Hughes spat at me and said, "I don't talk to queers."
I shrugged and turned to his wife, who was looking down at the ground. Her face was pale and she was methodically rubbing her hands on the fabric of her skirt. She looked up at me and said, "If you tell Ron that you didn't see us, he'll let Frank go."
I didn't say anything.
After a moment, she sighed. "That house was her dream."
"Shut up, Roberta." That was her husband.
"Everyone around here knows all about it, Frank. What can it hurt?"
"Whose dream?" I asked.
"Annie's. She was Mr. O'Bannion's only child. She went to Stanford after the war and became an architect. She designed this house." Pulling out a handkerchief, Mrs. Hughes wiped her eyes. "We just wanted to make sure that no one had done anything to the house."
"Such as?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know. When Doreen called and told us the house had been ransacked, I guess we both lost our heads. Annie was like my very own daughter."
"Who is O'Bannion?"
I heard Mr. Hughes sputter behind me. "Just about the nicest man you'd ever want to know, that's who. If you're so smart, how come you don't know that he was the owner of this property before your own father came along?"
I turned and looked at him. "He never told me."
Mr. Hughes rolled his eyes and harrumphed.
"They're both gone now," said Mrs. Hughes.
"Did he die last year?"
She shook her head. "No. He died back in 1953. In the fall. Slipped on the floor in the entry way and hit his head..." She started crying.
"Now, Roberta," said her husband as he pulled at his handcuffs. He stood and looked helpless. His wife was five feet away, buried in her handkerchief.
I walked over and gently guided her towards him. He put his free arm around her back and said, "Now, you know that wasn't your fault. He was an old man and he had no business living by himself."
His wife nodded and said, "I know, Frank. I just miss the old coot."
Mr. Hughes chuckled. "He was a handful, but I've never known a better man."
They stood there for a moment until Mrs. Hughes came to. She kissed her husband on the cheek and mov
ed away. Looking at me, she gave me a small smile and said, "You must think we're dotty, the way we're carrying on."
I shook my head. "Not at all."
Carter, who, by that time was standing close by, asked, "What happened to Annie?"
"Cancer," said Mr. Hughes, his voice rough with emotion. "Came out of nowhere. She was lively as always in January and, by May, she was gone. Practically a skeleton. Died in that house, too."
I felt myself tearing up. Our friend from Hartford Street, Evelyn Key, had died of cancer earlier in the year. We'd taken her to Carter's house on Kauai so she could leave on her own terms. I looked over at Carter, whose eyes were red. He nodded slightly but didn't say anything.
Right then, I heard Deputy Forrester call out from inside the house. "Mr. Williams? Can you come in here for a minute?"
I walked over to the stone porch and made my way inside. As I did, the deputy motioned towards the kitchen. I followed him into the kitchen, past the man dusting for fingerprints, and out to the storage room. When we got to the rear door, I noticed that the photographer was taking shots of the body.
"This is the body as you saw it?" asked the deputy as he walked outside and behind the photographer.
I stepped out onto the grass and looked down. "Yeah. Just like that."
"Notice anything unusual?"
"Like the absence of any blood at the wound?"
The deputy nodded. "Anything else?"
"He looks posed."
The deputy nodded again. "That's what I thought."
I had a sudden thought. "I've seen something like this before."
Pushing his hat back a little with his left hand, Forrester looked at me with a slight frown. "How so?"
"Not with the body but in the house. Mind if I show you?"
He shrugged and said, "Fine by me."
. . .
We stood in the kitchen. I asked, "How tall do you think the person was who did all this?"
All the cabinet doors were open. He looked at the shelves. He leaned over to see how high up he could easily reach into the closest cabinet. He said, "I'm just about six feet tall. I can easily reach the third shelf but all those shelves are intact." He looked at me for a moment. "I've already got someone in mind for this. He's only about 5'5", maybe 5'6"."
"Bobby Reynolds?"
"That would be him. How'd you know?"
"He and Carl delivered firewood here yesterday. Why does everyone around here, other than Mrs. Hughes, call them hoodlums?"
The deputy grinned for a moment. "They've always been best friends and they've played their fair share of pranks on different folks." His grin faded. "But, if it was Bobby, they must have fought about something."
I looked at the deputy for a long moment. He seemed to be a fair man, so I said, "I don't think Bobby killed him."
Forrester's brown eyes narrowed. "How do you come to that conclusion?"
"Look at this kitchen."
We both looked around. About half of it was already cleaned up, thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Hughes. Pointing to the mess that remained, I said, "Notice how there is flour on top of everything?"
He nodded. "Sure. Last act of someone having a fit."
I shook my head. "Nope. Like I said, I've seen this kind of thing before."
Crossing his arms, the deputy leaned against the counter. "Where?"
"In Washington, D.C. A man was murdered in his own house. The house looked like it had been ransacked. It was three stories, four including the basement. Only the first floor had been gone over. But it was methodical. Like here." I pointed to the shelves. "See how everything on the two lower shelves has been pulled out? Not just a few things. Everything."
I walked over to where the deputy was leaning. I pulled out the drawer just to his left. Along with a small stack of brown paper bags, it held a roll of tin foil and a roll of wax paper. "Why weren't these drawers yanked open?"
I walked around the deputy to the double-door refrigerator that was to his right. Opening up the right side, I pointed and asked, "And why was nothing in here touched?"
The deputy shrugged. "Maybe the fit passed."
I shook my head. "Nope. This has been staged to cover up what really happened. That's why the flour was scattered over everything at the end."
He shrugged. "Maybe. Any ideas as to what might have killed Carl?"
I nodded. "Carbon monoxide."
He frowned at me. "How?"
"The power went out last night. There's an automatic generator somewhere in here and it's not ventilated right. It kicked on. We didn't know because we'd lit a fire in the fire pit in the living room and turned out all the lights. We both started getting sleepy. Carter, who used to be a fireman, figured it out and managed to crawl over to the front door and open it. He then dragged me over. Once we'd come to, we packed up some things and left. That was around 2. We drove back up to Carmel and checked in at the Hide-A-Way Motel. Mrs. O'Keefe told us that Mrs. Hughes had hired Carl and Bobby to install the generator and that they probably screwed it up."
"Did they?"
I shrugged. "Dunno. Before we could take a look, we found all of this."
The deputy sighed and nodded to himself without saying anything. He seemed to be weighing something on his mind. After a few seconds, he said, "Can you ask Mr. Jones to come in?"
. . .
We found the generator in a sound-proof closet in the kitchen. While Carter was taking a look at it, I asked, "Do you have to arrest Mr. Hughes?"
The deputy shook his head. "I just wanted to shake him up a bit. I also wanted to give you a chance to do something nice for the guy. Frank Hughes is an Okie and he doesn't like anyone who's different in any way. Stubborn as a mule, too, but Mr. O'Bannion liked him. From what I heard, he hired the man out of the C.C.C. camp down the road in 1935 or so to run his little ranch up here." The C.C.C., the Civilian Conservation Corps, had been a New Deal program that had employed a lot of out-of-work men during the Depression. It was one of the rare New Deal programs that my father had approved of.
I could hear the squeak of the deputy's cowboy boots on the floor as he shifted his weight. "After six months, Frank sent for his wife, Roberta, who was still back in Oklahoma somewhere. That was when Mrs. O'Bannion was still alive. The two ladies got on like a house afire, so it was one big happy family until right after the war. Mrs. O'Bannion died in a car accident between here and Carmel. She was driving back from some meeting or something and a drunk driver didn't stay in his lane and sideswiped her. Wouldn't have likely killed her except that her car went out of control and over the side. It was pretty horrible. She burned to a crisp in the fire."
"That was when Annie was going to Stanford?"
Deputy Forrester blushed and swallowed hard at the mention of the girl's name. I'd already noticed he didn't have a wedding band. "Yeah."
Before he could say anymore, Carter stood up and said, "The generator was installed just fine. In fact, it's up to code, as far as I can tell. Whoever installed this sound proofing did a great job. We didn't hear it. The only reason I knew it was on was because I could feel the vibration through the floor." He was wiping his hands on a kitchen towel as he talked. "But there are two interesting things I found."
"What's that?" asked the deputy.
"First is that someone detached the vent pipe from the main housing."
"How can you tell?"
"The pipe attaches to the housing by four screws. Whoever detached it, didn't pick up after himself." Opening his hand, he revealed four flathead screws and a black rubber ring.
The deputy looked at Carter's hand. "Where'd you find those?"
"The screws were scattered on the floor. The gasket"—that was the black rubber ring—"was still partially attached to the vent pipe. It was hanging down, loose."
"So that pipe didn't just come off by accident?" asked the deputy.
"Nope," replied Carter. "Someone pulled it off. And that wouldn't have been easy. To do that, you'd have to reach around behind
the generator and turn the screws backwards from the way you'd be accustomed to doing so normally."
The deputy walked up to the generator, leaned over, and looked at it closely. "Looks new."
Carter nodded. "We can call Dr. Williams to check, but my guess is that it's no more than three months old."
Standing, the deputy asked, "What's the other thing you found?"
"The gas tank is empty."
"Any idea as to how long a full tank would run for?"
Carter shook his head. "I don't know the specifics on a model like this. I'd imagine it's gotta be at least four hours. But I don't know for sure."
"Did you turn it off before you left this morning?"
"No," replied Carter. "Our only thought was to grab some things and get out."
The deputy nodded thoughtfully.
I looked at the deputy. "Did whoever it was go through the bedrooms?"
Carter ran his hand over the back of his neck as Deputy Forrester asked me, "You didn't see the bedrooms?"
I shook my head and looked up at Carter, who said, "I did." By the tone of his voice, I could tell there was something wrong there.
. . .
"So you pulled the mattress off this bed and dragged it into the living room last night?" That was the deputy.
I nodded absentmindedly. "Yeah."
"And you two were gonna sleep by the fire instead of in here?"
Carter replied, "There's no central heating in the house."
"Why didn't you sleep in the other bedroom?"
I shook my head. "Not in my father's bed."
Nodding, the deputy said, "Yeah." He paused and then pointed. "What do you make of that?"
He was looking at the closet, which was empty. All of our clothes had been stolen. All that was left were the hangers. Whoever it was had taken every piece, from shoes and garters to belts and ties. They'd emptied out the chest of drawers and had even taken Carter's new electric razor that he was still trying out and my spare toothbrush and the extra can of Pepsodent tooth powder I'd left on the counter. They'd apparently packed it all up in the trunk, because that was gone too. It didn't make any sense.
Carter snorted. "Do you know anyone around here who could wear my clothes?"
The Rotten Rancher (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 16) Page 5
