But I didn’t say any of that to Robideaux. He wouldn’t like hearing it, and it might close him off. I said, “What put the damper on her marriage? Originally, I mean.”
“He did. Maybe he had something going on the side himself. Or maybe he got wrapped up in being a big shot; he was never home, always running off to meetings, always working late at the office. Or, hell, maybe he just got bored and lost interest.”
Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe she was the one who got bored and lost interest, with or without provocation.
I asked, “If things were that bad, how come she stayed married to him?”
“Why do you think? He was making money. Everybody likes money.”
“He wasn’t making money recently. Northern Development is overextended; that’s why they’ve been fighting so hard on the Musket Creek project.”
“I know that,” Robideaux said.
“Then how come the sudden decision on divorce?”
“It wasn’t Helen’s idea.”
“No? You mean it was O’Daniel’s?”
“He was going to file any day. He told her that.”
“When did he tell her?”
“A week ago.”
“What made him decide he wanted out?”
“He said he was fed up with her sleeping around on him.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all he told her.”
“He didn’t try to get her to waive her community property rights, did he? Or to take some kind of smaller settlement?”
“Christ, no. She’d have laughed in his face.”
“I’ll bet she would.”
“Like I said before, she had no reason to kill him. Nobody did. It must’ve been an accident-”
“Nobody did?” I said. “How about you and just about everybody who lives out here? With Randall and O’Daniel both dead, Northern Development will probably go belly up. That’s damned good news for Musket Creek.”
“Sure. But I didn’t kill anybody to make it happen, and neither did any of my neighbors. I’ve been here six years. I know these people. None of them is capable of cold-blooded murder.”
“How about Helen O’Daniel? Is she capable of it?”
“No, and the hell with you.”
“You love her, huh?”
“Close enough,” he said.
“And she loves you.”
“So?”
“I’m just wondering why she didn’t call to tell you about her husband’s death. You’ve got a telephone sitting right over there, and she’s known about it ever since early this morning.”
He came out of the chair, narrow-eyed and tense. “Get out of here,” he said.
“It’s nothing you haven’t been wondering yourself, Robideaux,” I said. “Why didn’t she call?”
“She’s got a reason, all right? Now get the hell out of my house. Otherwise, you and I are going to have trouble, cops or no cops.”
He meant it; I could see it in his eyes. I’d got what I’d come for-some of it, anyhow-and I didn’t mind leaving, but I didn’t want to do it too quickly, didn’t want to give him the idea he could push me around.
I said, “Okay. A little warning first, though: If you’re holding anything back, protecting Helen O’Daniel or anybody else, you’d better think it over twice. Accessory to murder puts you behind bars a long time in California.”
I went out and shut the door softly on its latch behind me. The rain had stopped and there were more blue jigsaw pieces overhead; you could hear the water dripping in the surrounding woods like a chorus of leaky faucets. The heat was rebuilding, so that the air had a wet, steamy feel that was almost tropical.
In the car I sat for a time and thought over what I’d found out. Not much, really. Maybe Robideaux and Helen O‘Daniel were in love, but it was more likely he’d been using her-starving artist latching onto a meal ticket-and she’d been using him, too, for stud service. From what I’d seen, both of them deserved each other. Robideaux had plenty of motive for killing both Randall and O’Daniel, but none of it seemed particularly strong. I couldn’t see him doing it for community reasons; he was too self-centered for that. His home meant something to him, but it wasn’t special enough to warrant homicide in order to maintain it. Ditto his affair with Mrs. O’Daniel. Even if he’d found out she was seeing Randall behind his back, he just wasn’t the type to knock off a rival. If he was going to kill anybody in that kind of situation, it would probably be Helen herself.
Mrs. O‘Daniel also had plenty of motive for disposing of both her husband and her lover: O’Daniel to get her hands on what was left of his assets; Randall for any one of half a dozen good reasons, including the possibility that he’d been playing around on her too. She was the type to fly off into a jealous and violent rage, given enough impetus. But was she really dumb enough to believe she could murder both of them, no matter how clever her methods, and get away with it? All murderers are stupid, Jim Telford had said. Well, maybe. Maybe.
The one puzzling thing I’d learned was Frank O‘Daniel’s apparently sudden decision to file for divorce-assuming Mrs. O’Daniel hadn’t been lying to Robideaux about that, for reasons of her own. O’Daniel had told Treacle he couldn’t afford to divorce his wife. What had changed his mind? It was something I would have to check on.
The air was stuffy inside the car; I rolled down the window to let in some of the dying wind. Then I started the engine, backed out onto the road, and headed back the way I’d come.
But I didn’t get far, not much more than a few hundred yards. I came around a sharp turn, going fairly slow, twenty-five or so, and on the other side of it was an old black car pulled slantwise across the road, completely blocking it. And somebody, for Christ’s sake, was sitting on the hood, somebody wearing a yellow rain slicker and a yellow floppy hat.
There was no room to get around on either side; I hit the brakes, hard. The car slewed sideways on the muddy road surface and the wheel tried to come out of my hands. I held it, managed to get the machine stopped at an angle to the other one, not twenty feet from its right front fender.
Sweat stung my eyes; I sleeved it off and jammed the door handle down and got out yelling. “What the hell’s the goddamn idea? I almost plowed into you!”
The guy on the hood stepped down, slowly, and I saw who he was: Jack Coleclaw’s son, Gary. The car was the old Chrysler he’d been working on inside the garage yesterday. He covered about half the distance between us and then stopped. Both of his hands were thrust inside the slicker’s slash pockets.
He said, “I been waiting for you. I seen you drive by our place and come up here. So I followed you.”
“Why? What do you want?”
“To tell you something,” he said, and he took his hand out of his pocket. “You better go away and don’t ever come back here again. That’s what I got to say.”
What he was holding was a gun, a rusty-looking old revolver with a long barrel.
I went tight all over; I could feel more sweat come oozing out of me. But he wasn’t pointing the thing in my direction-he was just moving it up and down, hefting it. The whole scene was bizarre, a little unreal. For some crazy reason I found myself thinking of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, tough guys with sneering faces saying, “Get out of town, stranger, or I’ll fill you full of lead.”
“Listen, Gary,” I said, quietly, “put that thing away. You don’t need to-”
“You listen,” he said. “I mean it. Go away and don’t come back to Musket Creek. If you do…” and he moved the revolver again. He knew how to use it, too; the way he was handling it told me that.
He backed up to the Chrysler, opened the driver’s door with his left hand, and slid inside. The starter ground, the engine chattered. He put the car in reverse and backed down the road, not too fast, not too slow, until he reached a wide place where he could turn around. Then he and the Chrysler were gone and I was standing there alone in the heat, listening to the rainwater drip in the trees and w
aiting for my pulse rate to slow to normal.
Get out of town, stranger, or I’ll fill you full of lead…
When I got back to the Sportsman’s Rest there was a dark blue Datsun parked in front of Kerry’s and my room, and when I went inside she said, “I rented a car while you were off in Ragged-Ass Gulch. I’m tired of being stuck here all by myself. At least now I can go someplace if I feel like it.”
Her tone dared me to argue with her; I didn’t argue with her. I went to the telephone instead and tried to call Helen O’Daniel. No answer. I called the sheriffs department and asked for Jim Telford. He was gone for the day, and no, they weren’t allowed or even inclined to give out his home number. I looked up his name in the telephone directory. He wasn’t listed.
Kerry said, “Martin Treacle called. He wants you to call him back right away.”
“Did he sound calmer than he was this morning?”
“No. I think he wants his hand held.”
“Let’s go have dinner,” I said.
So we went and had dinner-a companionable one, for a change. And we came back and I tried the O’Daniel number again and still nobody answered. I read a 1936 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly; Kerry read her mystery novel. I wanted to make love in spite of my sore face; she didn’t. She went to sleep and I lay there, wide awake, thinking about the investigation and contemplating my lot in life.
At the moment, neither one seemed very promising.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The way Monday started off, I knew it was going to be a humdinger.
I didn’t sleep very well that night-bad dreams, some involving explosions and fire and hands with guns in them shooting me, then dragging my body down into dark water; others crazily erotic and involving not Kerry but Jeanne Emerson. When I woke up in the morning I felt groggy and my face hurt and the sheets were damply bunched under me. I also happened to be alone in bed: a little fumbling around told me that.
I managed to get my eyes open, to sit up. Kerry was hunched at the dining table across the room, wearing nothing but her bra and panties, playing solitaire. Uh-oh, I thought with a fuzzy sort of bewilderment. Now what did I do? The only times I had seen her play solitaire was when she was angry and upset, and as far as I knew she hadn’t gone out anywhere. Which left me-something to do with me.
“Morning,” I said, more or less cheerfully. And waited.
Silence. She didn’t even look my way, much less quit slapping cards down on the table.
“Hey. Remember me?”
Silence.
“Kerry? What’s the matter?”
She paused with part of the deck in one hand and a red queen in the other. Her head came around, slowly, and the look she gave me would have wilted a rose at twenty paces. “What’s the matter?” she said. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter. You talk in your goddamn sleep.”
“What?”
“In your sleep. Talk. You.”
“What?”
“‘Oh, Jeanne,’ you said. ‘Oh, baby.’ And the whole time you were pawing me and snuggling up. ‘Oh, Jeanne baby.’ You son of a bitch.”
I was awake now, good and awake. I swung out of bed and got up too fast and almost tripped over a chair that was on that side. As it was, I reeled a little and banged into the wall and cracked my elbow. I wheeled around to face her-the Naked Ape, standing there with his tail and his secret hanging out.
“Listen,” I said, “listen, I had some kind of crazy dream, that’s all. You can’t hold somebody responsible for what he dreams. The subconscious-”
“Don’t give me that crap,” she said. “I don’t give a damn about your subconscious. It’s your conscious I’m interested in. Not to mention your conscience. How many times did you sleep with her?”
“What?”
“Jeanne Emerson, the Chinese fireball. How many times?”
“I never slept with her, not once-”
“Hah. ”
“Kerry-”
“Sure. ‘Oh, Jeanne baby.’ Sure.”
“I’m telling you, I did not go to bed with her.”
She slapped the red queen down hard enough to make the other cards jump. Otherwise, silence.
“Come on, now,” I said, “this is silly. You can’t be this upset over some stupid dream I had-”
“It wasn’t your dream, it was what you said. And what you did.”
“What did I do?”
“Something you never did before.”
“ What, for God’s sake?”
She told me what. I gawped at her a little.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Not to me, no. That’s the point. You sure as hell must have done it to her.”
“Look, how many times do I have to say it, I never did anything with or to Jeanne Emerson!”
“You’re lying. You’ve got guilt written all over your face.”
“Goddamn it, I’m not lying!”
“Quit yelling.”
“I’m not yelling either!” I was good and mad now, partly because I was feeling guilty-and that was stupid because I really didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. “I’m tired of all this, the way you’ve been acting lately. Accusations, mood changes, me having to walk on eggshells around you all the time… I won’t put up with it anymore. ”
“You’re trying to change the subject-”
“The hell I am. You want me to start confessing; how about if you do some confessing? How about telling me why you’ve been so bitchy the past couple of weeks. ”
She looked away from me. Her face was white, her hands were clenched into tight little fists.
“Well?” I said.
She came up out of the chair so fast she whacked into the table and sent the cards flying. The look of strain on her face was a little frightening. “Did-you-sleep-with-Jeanne-Emerson?”
The way she said that was a little frightening, too, and it took the edge off my own anger. I started to reach out to her, but she backed away from me; her hands were still clenched.
“Kerry, calm down-”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. Tell me the truth. Did you screw her?”
“No. I swear to you I didn’t. ”
“Liar. ”
“I said I swear it to you. She wanted me to. She even… ah hell, she came on to me one night, the last time I saw her. The night she came to my flat to take her photographs.”
“Came on to you? What do you mean by that?”
“Made a pass at me, what do you think I mean?”
“She came right out and asked you to go to bed with her?”
“No. I was showing her something-”
“I’ll bet you were.”
“-in one of my pulp magazines, and she put her arms around me and kissed me and then… ”
“And then what? ”
“All right. She grabbed me.”
“Grabbed you? I thought you said she had her arms around you.”
“Hell. You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t know. You tell me.”
“She grabbed my private part, all right?”
“Your private part.”
“That’s right, my private part.”
“And what did you do?”
“I’m not the lustful swine you think I am,” I said. “I took it away from her.”
She looked at my face. Then she looked at the middle of my anatomy. Then the strain went away, and color came back into her cheeks, and her mouth began to twitch-and suddenly she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard tears squeezed out of her eyes; she staggered past me to the bed and collapsed on it and sat there cackling and hooting like a madwoman.
“What the hell’s so funny?”
“You took it away from her!” Kerry said, and let out a whoop that rattled the windows. “Oh my God! You took it away from her!”
“Ha, ha. Big joke.”
“What did she say when you tore it out of her hand? ‘Oh please, gi
ve it back to me?”’ Another whoop.
“She didn’t say anything, she just left, and I haven’t seen her since. Okay? You satisfied?”
Kerry giggled and snorted for another ten seconds or so before she got herself under control. “Oh Lord,” she said, wiping her eyes, “I wish I’d been there. I wish I’d seen the expression on your face when she grabbed you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it wasn’t funny at the time. It’s still not funny from where I stand.”
“Maybe not from where you stand, sweetie,” she said, “but from where I’m sitting I’ve got a different perspective on the thing. ” And she was off on another fit of cackling.
I glared at her.
Pretty soon she quit laughing altogether, wiped her eyes again, put on a sober expression, and looked back at my face for a change. “You weren’t even tempted, huh?” she said.
“Sure I was tempted. Who wouldn’t be tempted? My subconscious is probably still tempted, which is the reason for that stupid dream last night. ”
“You sound angry,” she said. “Are you angry?”
“Yeah, I’m angry. I didn’t want to tell you about that night with Jeanne Emerson; it’s embarrassing. And I don’t like having to defend myself all the time, either. I’m tired of being sniped at and treated like a villain.”
“Don’t start yelling again,” she said.
“I’m not yelling, damn it. I’m not yelling. I’m just trying to talk to you here, get some things out into the open.”
“What things?”
“You know what things. The way you’ve been acting, all this moody stuff. What’s bothering you, anyway?”
Her gaze shifted to her hands. “Nothing’s bothering me.”
“Bull. Come on, what is it?”
Headshake.
“Kerry, talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing you can do.”
Wetness glistened in her eyes again, and her face showed more of the strain. She was hurting, that was plain now. And it made me hurt too-chased away my mad and replaced it with tenderness. I moved over to the bed and sat down and put my arm around her.
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