“So he’s been trying to find it by himself.”
“You go too damn far, Alex. There’s no reason why a man can’t take up fishing. And when a man takes it up, it can get to be a disease. And Donnie was a hunting fool until he took up fishing. I know Donnie pretty well, I just can’t see him… killing my sister.”
Alex thought for a few minutes. “If a man was going out hunting for that money, what would be the thing he’d most likely take with him?”
“Well, he’d take a shovel. Right after my father died, there was a run on shovels like you never see before.”
“And he wouldn’t be likely to carry a shovel to that boat every time he went out, would he?”
“It would look damn funny. I see what you mean. Let’s go.”
Buddy stuck his head in the office and told Betty they would be back in a little while. Buddy drove the blue jeep down Front Street and across Bay and another three blocks to Garner’s. They walked out onto the dock.
“Here it is,” he said. The aluminum boat was tied off, with a stern line on a piling, the bow line on a cleat on the dock. Buddy untied the bow line and brought the boat in close to a rotting step. He stepped into it lithely for a man of his size. Alex held the bow line and looked down into the boat. Buddy squatted and reached up under the shallow foredeck. He took out an object wrapped in a faded green tarp. He unwrapped it. They both stared at the folded entrenching tool for a few moments. Buddy wrapped it up again and stowed it. He climbed up onto the dock and was making the bow line fast when Alex turned and saw Donnie Capp walking swiftly toward them along the dock, his sallow face expressionless.
“What’s goin’ on?” he asked.
Buddy looked up at him casually. “Hi, Donnie. Alex here was thinking on getting a boat for himself. I told him about the rig we fixed you up with, and he wanted to see it, so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I showed it to him.”
“You have to get into it to show it to him?”
“Tell you the truth, Donnie, I forgot what horse motor you got, so I got in to lift up the motor cover and take a look.”
“It’s a little big for the boat,” Alex said. “I think a ten would do me.”
Buddy stood up and they stood facing Donnie Capp. The narrow colorless eyes swiveled quickly from face to face. Buddy said, “I guess it suits you all right, Donnie.”
“It’s fine.”
“Have you got a good used ten-horse around?” Alex asked Buddy.
“We better go back and check with John Geer.”
“If you got a boat like this one, why didn’t you show him the one you got instead of mine?” Donnie asked.
Buddy faltered for a moment and said, “Well, we haven’t exactly got one, Donnie, but there’s a fella has one wants to make a trade. And if we got a sale on the one he wants to trade, we can make him a better price. This time of year you have to get out and move the merchandise.”
“How about letting me take it out?” Alex asked quickly.
Donnie stared at him. He turned and spat into the water. “If you was on fire, Doyle, I wouldn’t do you the favor to push you off this here dock. And because you sold me the boat, Buddy, it doesn’t give you any right to mess with it.”
He turned on his heel and walked away. They could see the county car parked beside Garner’s shack.
“I need a drink,” Buddy said.
They parked the jeep in front of the Mack and went in. Janie was tending bar. They took a table far from the bar, over by the bowling machine. They both ordered beer and, as Janie turned away, Buddy asked her to bring a shot with his.
Buddy threw the shot down, gulped half the glass of beer and said, “I needed that. How did I do, talking to him?” He kept his voice low.
“I don’t know. If I’m right, he’s going to be suspicious of every damn thing.”
“You made a hell of a good guess.”
“Will you buy it?”
“I’ll buy part of it, Alex. Somebody else could have killed her and all the rest of it could still be the way you say.”
“I’ll grant that. But suppose we were both sure he did kill her? What would we do next?”
“You couldn’t find proof. There wasn’t a clue. And I don’t think he’d crack. If I was dead sure, Alex, I think I’d just up and kill him with my hands. Ever since I got my growth I’ve had to be careful about losing my temper. I cleaned this place out one night. Over seven hundred bucks’ damages. It was some crack somebody made about Betty. I didn’t kill anybody. But I come too damn close for comfort. He was out cold for three days and he didn’t get out of Davis General Hospital for nearly three weeks.”
“That would be a dandy solution, Buddy. You kill him and the law takes care of you. Nice for Betty and your mother. But you’ve been the big hero, so it’s all right.”
“I talk a lot, don’t I?”
“The thing to do is get hold of Lucas Pennyweather and get him down here. Pay his way. See if he can take you to the place Jenna described to him, if she did describe a specific place. It’s worth the gamble. You’ve got a legitimate reason. And… it might be interesting to see how Capp reacts if Lucas shows up down here.”
“Here comes Betty. Let’s keep it to ourselves.”
She came directly to the table and said, “Well! My spies reported the jeep in front of this place. If a girl wants a beer, she has to come get her own.” She sat down. “One brew, Janie, please.”
“Who’s minding the store?” Buddy asked.
“The capable Mrs. West and the capable Mr. Geer. There was a phone call from Clearwater. Mr. Hitchins. He wants to have that Consolidated of his brought down here for a lot of work and summer storage. I said we could take it.”
“Forty-two feet, isn’t it?”
“With two Chrysler 275’s. I looked it up. His captain will bring it down and turn it over to us. I guess you must have had an intensive tour of inspection, Alex.”
“I saw everything. Saw the Lady Bird.”
“My angel. Can I ask what is the matter with you two? Aren’t you getting along? You act odd and strained.”
“We’re getting along fine, Betty.”
She looked at the two of them dubiously. “I hope so.” They talked boats for a little while and then went back to the yard. Betty went into the office. Buddy stood by Alex beside the Dodge. “I’ll get the address and get the call through. If he’s well enough to come down, I’ll pay his way. That is, if Jenna told him anything definite. I’ll go over town now and find out the address and make the call.”
Alex looked at his watch. “It’s after four now. I want to stop and see Myra Ducklin. Why don’t you bring Betty out for a swim later on and you can tell me how you made out?”
“Okay.”
Doyle had a visit with Myra Ducklin. It was a little after five when he drove back toward the key. He thought of his own deductions, not with pride, but with grim and somewhat weary acceptance. A stranger could not have come to Ramona and found such an inevitable way of fitting the pieces together. And the local people had been too close to it all to understand how and why it had happened. It had required the rare combination of great familiarity so that people would talk, plus that special detachment which came from having been away so long. And perhaps one additional factor had been necessary—the sort of training which made you alert to the motives of other human beings, which taught you to turn odd facts this way and that way until a pattern began to form, until you began to sense what you had to look for to complete the pattern and make it so obvious that you began to wonder how it could have been overlooked.
He felt reasonably certain that Capp had killed the woman, had held her by the throat until she was dead. But one portion of the pattern was indistinct. He could not account for the odd reactions of Colonel M’Gann at the time he had talked to him. The curious reference to suicide. The man’s insistence on staying here where this thing had happened.
The blue jeep was in his back yard. The house was empty. He changed to trun
ks and went out onto the beach. They were swimming, a hundred yards off shore. Betty waved to him and he swam out to where they were.
chapter EIGHT
BUDDY MADE THE OPPORTUNITY to talk privately with Alex by saying, “Any obliging type gal would swim in and open up some cold beer that we brought out and put in your ice box, and be there on the beach to meet us when we come out.”
“I just work here,” she said, and made a face at them and swam toward the cottage.
Buddy rolled over on his back and floated. “Got the name and the town, but not the address. A Mrs. Trace Annison up in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Ran into Judge Ellandon outside of Ducklin’s and he give me the name. So I got change and phoned up there. Got hold of her. Could hear a lot of kids squalling in the background. Funny damn thing, Alex, she thought I was phoning her to say Lucas had showed up down here. Couldn’t get it through her head I wasn’t phoning from the sheriff’s office.
“She cried a little on the phone. Said Lucas had gotten real restless the past few months. Kept saying he was homesick for the sight of water. And about eight or nine days ago he took off. Left her a note saying he was coming back here. She knows he couldn’t have had more than ten dollars on him, probably not that much. Soon as she found the note she phoned the sheriff’s office over in Davis. She doesn’t think Lucas is right in the head. And he’s too old to be beating his way back across country. She asked Lawlor to keep a lookout for him and let her know by collect phone when he arrives so can come back down and pick him up again.”
“Then Lawlor would have told Donnie!”
“Sure he would. So Donnie is waiting for him.”
“Where would Lucas head for when he gets back?”
“Depends on the time of day. If it was morning, I guess he’d head for Chaney’s Bayou, back to that shack he shared with Arnie Blassit. And if it was afternoon or evening, he’d probably head for the Mack. You know, he must be awful close to eighty years old, Alex.”
“I wouldn’t want Donnie to get to him before anybody sees him. He might never be seen again.”
“Just how the hell do you make sure that won’t happen?”
“I don’t know, Buddy.”
“I know one thing. It isn’t natural that if Donnie knew about it from Lawlor, he wouldn’t pass the word around. People would get a kick out of it, old Lucas running out on his daughter and heading back here. It’s the kind of thing you’d talk about.”
“Have you told anybody about it?”
“Just you.”
“Then wouldn’t it help a little to spread the word? So people would be looking for him?”
Buddy asked then, in a quiet voice, “What if he already got here, Alex? How can we know he didn’t make it back here fast? How can we know Donnie hasn’t already got the money and Lucas is some place on the bottom of the bay?”
“That could have happened. He could have come in at night, walking over from Davis. Donnie must patrol that road.”
“Right often. But, wait a minute—now you’ve got me doing it—how about that shovel? If Lucas found the place for him, it would be natural to leave that shovel there, wouldn’t it? If he got it all, he wouldn’t need the shovel. And if he wasn’t sure he got it all, he’d leave it there for the next time he got a chance to go back and dig.”
“So let’s figure that Lucas hasn’t gotten here yet. It’s about all we can do.”
“And I’ll spread the word that he’s on his way back, that he run away from home like a little kid.”
“It will get back to Donnie.”
“Sure it will, and it ought to give him the jumps. That is, Alex, if we haven’t been going overboard with all this guesswork.”
“You saw the shovel.”
“I know. I know. And I saw how he acted this afternoon. But we seem to be getting spread so damn thin. I wish there was more to go on.”
Alex heard Betty’s shout and looked toward the beach. She was standing holding two cans of beer aloft. They swam in, side by side. When they walked up the slant of the beach together, Alex sensed that Buddy’s great hard bulk must make him look almost frail in comparison.
Later, when Betty had gone to shower and change, Buddy said, “Got me another idea, Alex.”
“Yes?”
“If Lucas comes in and he gets him, he’d use his own boat. Might have to leave Lucas tied up some place along the shore line where nobody would run across him before Donnie came to get him in that boat. So I can fix that boat a little. Easiest way is to plug the cooling system. He wouldn’t notice anything wrong. He’d go a couple of miles before it quit cold on him. Do that tonight.”
“Be careful.”
“I can move quiet in the dark.”
They left at six-thirty. Doyle sat on his porch and watched the last of the sunset. Just as the light was fading, a figure came into his line of vision, coming from his right, walking hastily along the packed sand at the water’s edge, almost running. He recognized Celia M’Gann, and there was such a look of trouble in the way she moved that he got up and went out into the gathering night. The screen door slammed behind him.
She stopped at the sound and took several tentative steps toward the cottage. “Mr. Doyle?” Her voice was shrill and taut, as though she could be close to losing control.
“Yes, Miss M’Gann,” he said, walking toward her.
“Have you seen my brother? Have you seen the colonel?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Have you been here long?”
“Since a little after five. I guess I would have seen him if he went by on the beach. I wasn’t watching the road.”
“Could you… help me look for him?”
“Sure. What’s wrong?”
And suddenly she was crying silently. There was just enough light in the west so that he could see her face, contorted like a child’s, as she stood there with her fists tightly clenched.
“You better try to tell me what’s wrong,” he said softly. And, to his discomfiture and astonishment, she turned and thrust herself against him, sobbing in a hoarse and rasping way against his throat, her strong body shaking. It did not last long. She wrenched herself away, saying harshly, “How stupid! How damn girlish!”
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
She stood with her back to him, wearing a pale blouse and a dark skirt, sandaled feet planted strongly on the tide-wet sand. She made a half gesture toward the charcoal Gulf. “He… might be out there.”
“And he might not be out there. He could have taken a walk.”
“Not after what happened.”
“What did happen? If you tell me maybe I can be more help to you.”
She turned and it was now too dark for him to see her expression. “You seem to be speaking with a good deal more precision, Mr. Doyle. What did you say to him when I left you alone?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Something changed him. I’m supposed to be an administrator, Mr. Doyle. I am on a leave of absence from a large insurance company. I was in charge of a section employing over three hundred women. I’m not a fool. I’m not as brilliant as my brother but I’m no fool. I could handle those women adequately. Today I said the wrong thing. I said a stupid thing. If he’s gone, it’s my fault. We’re twins. We’ve always been close. We’ve always had a curious awareness of what the other one is thinking. I do not see how I could have gone six months without knowing what was in his mind and how it was affecting him, holding him back when he should have been improving.”
She took a half step closer to him. “He didn’t take his nap today. He sat on the porch, almost motionless. I made his highball at five o’clock and took it to him. I sat by him, doing some mending. Without any warning at all, he said, ‘Did you kill her, Celia?’ What should my reaction have been? I know now. I should have reacted violently, with a horror, dismay that he could think such a thing. So, in complete stupidity, I sat there and said in a sort of mild and chiding way, ‘What a strange i
dea, Crawford. Of course not!’ And he did not speak again. And about fifteen minutes ago I found he was gone. For six months he’s been thinking I killed her. I know that now. It explains how he’s acted.”
Her fingers suddenly closed around his wrist. They were cold and strong. “So now he must think I did. And what could he do with a conviction like that? Turn me in? Keep on letting me take care of him? Live with that knowledge? An almost insoluble problem for the kind of man he is. I reacted improperly, Mr. Doyle, because you become accustomed to treating invalids as if they were children. And because I am guilty. I came so horribly close to killing her. So desperately close. I should have told him. But I didn’t want to risk upsetting him even more than he was already upset when he learned she was dead. He wasn’t as strong six months ago as he is now. And after a little while… it seemed too late. But he must have heard me leave the cottage that night. And return. And he never let on that he had heard anything. He’s always known there wasn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for him. And I almost did him the… ultimate favor. Help me, Mr. Doyle. Help me find him.”
He went out to the car and got a flashlight out of the glove compartment. He walked up the beach with her. The tide was coming in. The waves had already erased the tracks she had made walking down toward his cottage. He could find no sign of any tracks the colonel might have left.
They walked north. As they walked she said, “I have the feeling it’s ended now. All of it. She was such a horror. I was afraid the cumulative strain of her misbehavior would kill him. Every time she didn’t return for two or three nights, I would be hoping she’d never come back. We had a terrible quarrel out on the beach the Wednesday before she was killed. I tried to plead with her, to beg her to be considerate. I couldn’t reach her. She told me to live my own life, not hers. I said that I shouldn’t have expected more of her. She had come from nothing. And then she started to curse and rant at me, telling me how good her family was, how her father had been a wealthy man, how he had bought her everything. And she brought up that ridiculous myth of hidden money.
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