With a strangled sound in his throat, Moffitt jumped to his feet. I wondered if anyone else noticed Fischer catch his wrist in a powerful grip and hold him back. Most must have been watching Aileen as she took a third step, stopped and started to sway. Even I started to unwind from my cushion, but before I could, Fischer was up—with Moffitt at his shoulder—and had caught Aileen before she could fall. Gently, he took her weight on his arms and let his thick legs bend until they were both kneeling with Mofitt poised over them just half a step too slow.
“It’s okay, Aileen,” Fischer said, stroking her hair. “I understand. Hugo understands.” Shifting her weight to his left arm, Fischer reached back and pulled Moffitt to a kneeling position, too. Moffitt put his arm around Aileen’s shoulders. The three were frozen in the middle of the circle like figures out of an illustrated Bible: God forgiving the sinners.
I won’t say that mine were the only dry eyes in the room, but all of the women were having hanky trouble, and some of the men looked suspiciously moist. Even old Crenshaw looked as though somebody had hit him with a sneak punch.
Eventually, Fischer stood up over the kneeling figures of Don and Aileen as if about to announce his next miracle. Then Moffitt helped his sobbing wife over to his cushion, and Fischer completed the circle again. His face said that he had things back under control.
A heavy silence fell over the room, broken only by Aileen’s muffled whimpers. Soon, even those subsided, and tension began to build up again. I wondered who would be the next turn.
Close to the last thing I expected to hear was Rachel’s husky voice say: “Hugo, I have a confession to make, too.” I turned, noting her calm expression and determined eye. She went on, ignoring me: “I have failed in my responsibility to the house and to my brothers and sisters.”
I thought I detected a minute glance in my direction before she said: “Hugo, I failed to tell you that this afternoon, when I went up to Joe Goodey’s room, Genie Martin was there. And I’m pretty sure she was there last night, too.”
18
Have you ever had the feeling that somebody had snuck up behind you and quick-frozen your brain? Mine was thirty degrees below zero and getting more numb by the second. Hundreds of little men were busily packing it with dry ice and whistling while they worked.
Everyone else in the happy circle seemed to be feeling the same. Rachel’s bombshell had frozen us where we sat. Years from then they would find us, fifteen skeletons in a circle of rotted cushions, and would wonder what evil demon had bewitched us. But then, Fischer, like the wizard he passed for, broke the spell by swiveling his great head, first toward Genie, then toward me. Then back to Genie.
I wasn’t sorry. With perhaps typical chauvinism, I was perfectly happy to sacrifice Genie to win a little time. Besides, I wasn’t paying too much attention to either Fischer or Genie. My eyes were on Pops. I’d suspected him of dozing slightly through Aileen Moffitt’s histrionics, and even now he was a bit slow coming to life considering the magnitude of the cat that Rachel had just let out of the bag. But I suspected that he’d come roaring back, and I wanted to be ready to jump the right way.
Fischer saved us both the trouble.
“Genie,” he boomed, “is what Rachel says true?”
Genie’s sharp little face was a maelstrom of emotion as she obviously weighed the options available to her: deny, cry, confess, run for it or come out counterpunching. Something whirred behind her bright eyes as she chose one.
Genie all but flew up from her cushion as she zeroed in on Rachel. “You’re just jealous,” she spat. “You pitiful, dried-up old moneybags. You couldn’t get him (meaning me) even with all your fucking cash, but you keep hanging around like a bitch in heat. You’d better get Rachel a real man,” she advised Fischer, “before she rapes a snake.”
That wasn’t exactly the reaction anybody had been expecting, but it was effective. That overdose of truth venom sent Rachel scrambling up the nearest tree. She just wasn’t in the same league with Genie when it came to gutter fighting. It even set the others back for a moment, but not for long. Before Genie had time to savor her victory a storm of abuse broke over her head.
I won’t bother to catalogue the different kinds of whore Genie was called. It tended to get a bit repetitious after the first few minutes, anyway. But surprisingly, this cascade of denunciation seemed to affect Genie about as much as the confetti had at her wedding. When the mob paused to refill their quivers of invective, she jumped back into the fray with both stack-heeled little feet.
“What the hell did you expect?” she demanded, turning on Pops, who’d said hardly a word. I think he was genuinely surprised and even hurt. “You’re nothing but a broken-down old phony who couldn’t even get it up on the Fourth of July. You lay around here trying to letch off all the chicks, but those days are gone, grandpa. You’d better stop thinking you can suck up youth from me or any other young chick, because you can’t.”
Then Genie compounded the heresy by switching her attack to Fischer. “But it’s not really Pops’ fault,” she cried, “it’s yours, Hugo. You’re so grateful for his loyalty you’d do anything to keep Pops happy. Even pimp for him. Pops likes young girls? Okay, here’s the message: Hey, girlie, you want to serve The Institute and Hugo? Go throw a fuck on Pops Martin. It’s no big thing. Nothing is too good for Pops, right?”
Genie pivoted around the circle as if we were all going to jump her. That wasn’t the most remote possibility I could think of. She was slinging unvarnished truths around like hand grenades, and the impact wasn’t much less shattering. Pops sat there looking destroyed. He couldn’t bring himself even to look at his young bride. Fischer, who wasn’t even supposed to be at a loss for words, couldn’t seem to find the right ones just then.
“Bullshit!” Genie cried. “I crawled in here out of the gutter, but I’m not a slave. I’m not a thing, a gift, you can give your old pal, Pops. I may have been a whore, but I’m not anymore, and even if I was I’d decide who I’d sell myself to.” She turned to face Fischer defiantly. “And if you don’t like it, Hugo, you can go fuck yourself!”
She balanced there staring into Fischer’s face as if she expected to be struck by lightning. Fischer didn’t say anything, just raised his flushed face and stared at her impassively. She held his gaze for perhaps thirty seconds, but then broke and bolted through the circle to the door.
We all stared at the door as it slammed behind her. But only Lenore Fischer got up from her pillow and started to follow.
“Let her go,” said Fischer peremptorily, but Lenore kept moving. Soon she had her hand on the doorknob. “Lenore,” said Fischer. Then more sharply: “Lenore!” But she opened the door and was gone. The door closed gently behind her, but the click rang like a gunshot in the stillness she left behind.
Then Fischer swiveled his big head toward me and said, as if none of the last ten minutes or so had happened: “Mr. Goodey, how is it that you choose to return our hospitality by trying to rape one of our young women—and her on her honeymoon, too?”
This was about the last thing anybody expected him to say, and after a massive intake of breath, there was a thunderclap of shocked laughter. It wasn’t really that funny, but the relief from tension was so great that they sat there and roared. It was more hysteria than laughter. I wasn’t even involved with The Institute, but I’d found Genie’s little revolt a disturbing experience. Fred Crenshaw seemed to be having the same reaction, only more so. His face was ashen.
Finally, after several spasmodic resurgences, the laughter died down, leaving in its wake a little pool of exhausted calm, broken only by the occasional stifled titter or gasp. Fischer seemed content to let the vacuum exist for a while, nut it seemed to me that this might be my moment.
“I wonder,” I said as offhandedly as I could manage, “whether any of you would be interested in knowing how J.B. Carter died?”
Cousin Harold let out an unintentional shout of laughter, but then all was silence. Twenty-four eyes were
trained on me. And serious.
“That’s not very funny, Goodey,” Fischer growled. “You ought—”
“It wasn’t meant to be,” I said. “I meant just what said. I know how J.B. died.”
“What the hell do you think you’re trying to pull off?’ demanded Mike Grenby, suddenly realizing that he was the law around there and that I was treading deep into his territory. “If you’ve got information—”
“Let him speak, Mike,” said Emma Carter quietly.
“I probably should have told you this in private, Mrs. Carter,” I said, “but I won’t try to keep you in suspense. As Lieutenant Grenby would probably have discovered tomorrow anyway, your husband wasn’t murdered. He was caught in a booby trap that he had set at the mouth of that cave of his.”
I’d expected them to be surprised, and they didn’t let me down. Even after the recent emotional bombardments, my revelation could be considered more than mildly interesting. I watched especially Emma’s face. There were tears in her eyes, but her predominant expression was one of relief. That may sound strange, but I think she’d been genuinely worried that one of The Institute’s muscle heads had killed J.B. in a burst of misguided loyalty to Fischer.
“Are you sure, Mr. Goodey?” she asked me.
“As certain as I can be,” I said. “Was J.B. a very strong man?”
“For his age,” she said, “yes he was. He’d worked hard all his life.”
“I thought so,” I said. Grenby was getting more and more curious and impatient. Fischer didn’t look like he’d wait much longer, either, so I decided to just spit it out. “What happened,” I said, speaking to the group, “was that J.B. was afraid that someone from down here would sneak up on him while he was sleeping. As a deterrent, he pulled a resilient tree limb across the mouth of the cave and fixed it into a shallow notch in the stone. The idea was that if anyone started messing around with the camouflage, it would spring back at them.”
“J.B. told you this?” Grenby asked.
“No. But after I talked him into untying me, and we’d left the cave, he seemed to be taking a lot of time and effort doing something at the mouth of the cave that he didn’t want me to see. And puffing and blowing as if it were fairly heavy going. I didn’t think of that again until I went up there this afternoon during the memorial service.”
“And you discovered something that Mike and his men missed, is that right, Goodey?” Fischer asked. He wanted to get back into the act, even if it was only as the straight man. And he didn’t mind calling attention to Grenby’s lack of efficiency, either.
“That they’d missed so far,” I said modestly. “Tomorrow they’d probably have discovered a long, whip-like branch on the pine beside the mouth of the cave. It’s about as thick as my wrist and almost without foliage from being pulled about. J.B. apparently got a bit careless with the trap, and it caught him. The blow was hard enough to turn him and send him reeling over the edge of the cliff.” Emma stiffened and recoiled from my words. I felt a tinge of guilt, as if my words had killed him. Fresh pain invaded her face, shattering the stoic calm she’d shown so far.
Instinctively, most of the members of the circle moved toward Emma to comfort her, Hugo in the lead. Nobody had to announce a recess in the megathon. Seeing that Emma was surrounded, Grenby came over to me. I wondered if I looked as silly in that white robe as he did. I led him through a pair of double doors to a small balcony overlooking the misty sea.
“You should have told me earlier, Goodey,” he said with a baleful expression on his clean-cut face.
“I didn’t get a chance,” I said. “Don’t be ungrateful. I would have told Dominguez while he was here, but you wouldn’t have like that much. Besides, this way you get all the credit. You said Dominguez wanted results. Besides, think of the hell you can give Shearer for not finding that booby trap. You’ll have him under your thumb for life.”
A shadow of uncertainty passed over Grenby’s features. “Goodey,” he said, “are you sure about this? Are you positive it was the limb? You couldn’t be wrong?”
“I could be,” I said, “but I’m not. It’s all there. The limb with dried blood near the business end and even a few of the old man’s hairs. Everything but fingerprints. I didn’t touch it, but when you bend that limb back to the cave, you’ll find that its end will fit neatly into a notch J.B. chiseled into the rock. If you like, I’ll take you up there right now and show you.”
“No,” he said. “Tomorrow morning will be soon enough. What made you suspect a booby trap?”
“I didn’t—at first. I thought one of Fischer’s not-so-reformed dopers clubbed J.B. and put him over the cliff. But then I saw the notch. J.B. did a neat job, a bit too neat to blame on nature. And I looked for something that might have fitted into it. This could have made a very nice murder. The branch that clubbed J.B. disappeared completely into the foliage.”
“I underestimated you, Goodey,” Grenby said, a bit ruefully.
“That’s all right,” I said. “Most people do, and they’re usually right.” I glanced through the doors to where Hugo and the others were comforting Emma. The break had become more or less official, and coffee had appeared from someplace.
“Tell me, Grenby,” I said cautiously, keeping my voice low, “now that I’ve figured out how J. B. Carter died, would you say that you trusted me a bit more?”
He thought for a moment, probably wondering what hook I had hidden in that question, then said, reluctantly, “I suppose so. Why?”
“When this megathon starts rolling again,” I said, “do you know what’s going to happen?”
“No,” he said. “I can’t say that I do. It’s been full of surprises so far.” He gave me a look that said he was talking about my encounter with Genie. I don’t think he approved.
“I do,” I said. “If you’ll back my play, I’m going to try to find out who killed Katie Pierce.”
“That again?” he said, his look putting me back among the loonies.
“Yes, that again.” I was getting tired of his skepticism. “Look,” I said, “was I right about J.B.?”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “I suppose so, but…”
“No buts. I was right. And I’ve done you a lot of good. You owe me something for that.” I added: “Would you rather I asked Dominguez to back me?”
He didn’t have to answer that. He wanted me to do that about as much as he wanted bleeding piles. “Look, Goodey,” he said, in a reasonable tone of voice, “what’s the point of beating a dead horse? I keep telling you that the Pierce case is a dead issue.”
“So you keep saying. Crenshaw doesn’t think so. Neither do I. We’re probably going to be up all night playing Fischer’s silly games, anyway, so why shouldn’t we play my game for a few minutes? Nobody’s got a thing to lose, except the murderer, if there is one. If I’m wrong, nobody loses, and maybe Crenshaw is satisfied. He looks like he’s weakening a bit already. Everybody goes home happy. Even me. I get paid whether I succeed or not.” I didn’t mention the money Emma Carter had promised me. I wondered whether she would pay it.
“All right,” said Grenby, more out of weariness than conviction. “What do you want me to do?”
I told him, and the tiredness in his face was replaced with an expression of sheer outrage. “No,” he almost shouted. “You’re crazy, Goodey. And I don’t want anything to do with you. Christ!” He turned to walk back into the room, but I grabbed his arm. Grenby tried to wrench away, but I dug in and got a good grip.
“Listen to me, Grenby,” I said. “You haven’t any choice. You do as I say or I will get Dominguez out of bed right now and screw you up for fair. And I’ll tell him about my little scheme. He’d support me, and you know it. You make a decision right now. Do I make that telephone call?” Grenby wasn’t pulling away anymore, so I let go of his arm. He was staring at me with a combination of incredulity and disgust. I wouldn’t be invited to his birthday party. I had the feeling that he was going to tell me to telephone Domingu
ez and be damned.
Before he could, I said: “Grenby, you may not look very much like it right now, but you’re still a policeman. To you, Fischer may be the reincarnation of Jesus H. Christ, but you still get paid by the Sheriff’s Department of Monterey County. You can turn in your badge in the morning, but right now you’re still the law. You can at least help me do your job.”
I don’t know which part of that harangue got him, but Grenby kept his eyes nailed to mine and said: “You’re a son of a bitch, Goodey, but I’ll do it. God help you—and me—if you’re wrong. Which you are. God help us if you’re right, too.” He did an about-face and stomped back into the room.
I followed him, hoping that he would keep his promise.
19
“Well, Mike,” Fischer said, glowering at Grenby, “now you can tell Dominguez to go tie a knot in his tail, right? And to stay the hell away from The Institute.”
Fischer was full of bonhomie. He’d reconvened the megathon and was back in the catbird seat. Emma had left the room, I imagined to nurse her grief in private. Lenore had returned with Genie, who perched warily next to Pops as if expecting any minute to be throttled. But Pops seemed hardly to realize that she was there, or that any of us were, for that matter.
“I suppose so, Hugo,” Grenby said, without much enthusiasm.
“What’s the matter, boy?” Fischer asked good-humoredly, “You’re not sulking because Goodey found out how J.B. died, are you?”
“No, it’s not that,” Grenby said, and I was afraid that he’d go on to spill the beans. But Fischer didn’t give him a chance.
“Don’t worry, Mike,” he said. “I’m sure that Goodey won’t be greedy with the credit.” Fischer looked over at me. “Will you, Goodey? You wouldn’t be a glory hog, would you? Our friend Fred Crenshaw must be paying you pretty well for conducting his wild-goose chase. Isn’t that right, Fred?”
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