Death Qualified (19 page)

    There was very little more. As they got up to leave, Barbara asked, "What about his car when he got here?

    Did he put it in the garage, seem concerned about it?"

    "Nope," John Kendricks answered.

    "Didn't even lock it." He drew in a breath and said, "Whatever those people were looking for had to be in the pack. And it didn't weigh much; he carried it over his arm real easy like."

    Frank cleared his throat; when Barbara glanced at him, he said, "Nothing about searching the house or the car came out at the grand jury hearing. Nothing about the backpack. Just when he showed up here and when he left.

    And the fact that no one told Nell when to expect him.

    Tony got a bit testy about that, in fact."

    "He tried to make me say I warned her he'd be there on Saturday, that's why I wanted the kids out on Friday.

    But I never said that. I didn't know where he was, why he hadn't already showed up."

    "They'll pound on that nail again," Barbara said in warning. They left then, after Barbara told them she would be back before the trial started. And would they help or hinder the trial, she wondered, settling herself in the Buick once more. Help, she decided; it would be too unnatural for parents to maintain loyalty to a daughter-in-law who they believed had killed their son. And Tony would say, for the sake of the innocent grandchildren, they would try to protect her. She leaned back and closed her eyes as the car raised a cloud of dust.

    "You want some lunch?" Frank asked when they were back on the highway. It was over a hundred degrees. She shook her head.

    "Me too. Let's head for the mountains, Sisters."

    Dust devils danced across the drab wheat fields, water mirages teased on the blacktop road, and the heat mounted.

    Barbara's lips were so dry they felt as if they were cracking.

    It would be cooler in the mountains, she told herself;

    it had to be cooler in the mountains. She closed her eyes against the glare.

    In her mind's eye the image of a hunched figure in black appeared, dragging a rope with a bound girl, over lava that was cruelly sharp,-razor sharp, leaving a bloody, gory trail.. ..

    She jerked awake, free of the beginnings of a nightmare.

    They had started to climb the mountain now, but it was not yet any cooler. They had lunch in the cafe with llama pictures on the walls; afterward, Frank drove past the Eagleton ranch turnoff, then made a right turn, heading west, back home. On the summit of the pass he stopped, and they got out to look at the observatory made from lava rock, an imposing, ugly, black and brown building. Neither had the energy to climb the stairs to enter it. Instead, they stood at the guard rail at the parking area and looked out at the forest, down there where Lucas had stopped his car, where the girl had been killed. Today the air was hazy with smoke--a forest fire was out of control in the wilderness area south of here--and visibility was too bad to see much of anything. Barbara was not convinced that anyone could have seen ten miles even if the air had been crystal clear that day. To her eyes it was all forest, wave after wave of rolling treetops dropping ever lower, in a pattern that repeated endlessly, intersected by rivers of stilled black lava, and then all was fuzzed by haze, like a Japanese landscape.

    "Let's go home," she said abruptly, too hot and too discouraged to want to see anything else, to want to talk.

    Frank gave her a swift, appraising look, then wordlessly got back into the car and started the engine. The road deteriorated immediately after they left the lookout spot.

    The switchbacks came closer together, and curves were posted fifteen miles an hour, ten miles, and it seemed impossible that two cars could pass each other.

    "Deadman's Grade," Frank said, but he was holding the steering wheel tightly, concentrating on the road, not at all trying to make a joke.

    The heat continued for the next four days. The air cooled when the sun went down, but it was relative; cooler now meant eighty degrees at night. On Friday Bailey Novell came back with some preliminary reports. He was driving a battered Ford sedan, and trailing along behind him was a flatbed truck with wooden sides. A tall young man climbed down and stood at the hood of the truck grinning.

    He had long, curly brown hair, deep dimples, and very blue eyes. He was so muscular he made Bailey look frail in comparison, and he was so young he made Bailey and Barbara look old in comparison, she thought. It was fine for Bailey, sixty and showing every year of it, but she was not happy with the idea that this young man made her feel more tired than the heat warranted.

    Barbara looked from Bailey to the young man and back with raised eyebrows.

    "This is Lucky Rosner," Bailey said.

    "He works for Clovis Woods Products. Thought you might want a word with him." Bailey's eyes were twinkling, and he was grinning almost as widely as Lucky Rosner.

    He was altogether too pleased with himself, Barbara thought suspiciously. It was as unnatural for anyone to be grinning in such heat as it was unnatural for that young man to be so pretty.

    "Hi," she said.

    "I'm Barbara Holloway. Come on in.

    Dad's around back. He'll want to hear it too, whatever it is."

    Bailey looked past her and said hello to her father, who walked out at that moment, and they all stood in the drive way while the young man told them about last June.

    "You see, me and Pete Malinski were going out on a job and these two guys came up and stopped us. They said they wanted to play a joke on a lady friend of a friend of theirs, and they wanted to hire us to go along with it.

    What they said first was they wanted to rent our truck and gear for a day. That's all. And Pete and me, we knew it'd be our necks if they did that. I mean old man Clovis would have had our skins for something like that. We said no way. Then they said how about hiring one of us to drive, let one of them go out and play this trick, and the other guy would stay up there in Salem with whoever didn't go.

    Me. Pete drove and the guy told him where to go and all.

    Me and the other guy hung out in a pool hall. They paid all expenses, gas and whatnot, and two hundred each for us. We didn't see any-harm in it."

    When he paused, Barbara asked, "So you don't know what they actually did? Where's Pete now?"

    "Gone to his brother's wedding, down in Ashland. Be back in a couple of weeks, but I can tell you what he told me, if you want."

    "Oh, we want," Barbara muttered.

    "Go on."

    "So they come out here somewheres, and they pretend they're going to cut down a big old fir tree, that's all. The lady comes and brings out a gun and shoots at them, and they take off. End of joke. Some joke, Pete said. They could have got themselves killed."

    Barbara glared at Bailey as if it were his fault that Lucky Rosner found life so enjoyable. Bailey wagged his finger at her, loving every minute of this. Her father was no help; he was leaning against the porch rail, not missing a thing, but not interfering, either. She looked back toward Lucky.

    "Okay, I'll bite, what next?" she asked.

    "Well, me and Pete, we kept wondering about all that stuff, how much money they paid us and all, and we got to thinking that pretending to cut the tree down wasn't what they really wanted to begin with. That was like a cover, know what I mean?"

    She nodded.

    "Cover for what?"

    "See, Pete says when they got out to the place, this guy said he wanted to climb the tree and attach a rope, make it look legit. Like I said, they had the company truck, all the gear, and so what the hell, Pete thinks. Why not? The guy gets on the harness and up he goes. He can climb, but he's not a pro, Pete says, and he's pretty shaky when he gets down again. He just sort of slung the rope over the branch, but it was enough to fool the lady when she got home."

    Barbara's eyes were narrowed now as she frowned at Lucky.

    "You think he wanted to put something else up there? Was that it?"

    Lucky nodded.

    "What we decided. Then we figured those guys must be detectives, and the lady maybe was playing around a little, and her old man's out to get the goods on her, and so they wanted a bug. That's what we figured."

    A few minutes later Barbara, Frank, and Bailey stood on Nell's gravel driveway beside Frank's Buick and watched Lucky Rosner climb the tree. He was very fast, very agile, and although it looked easy the way he did it, Barbara's stomach twisted in reaction as he got higher and higher. He leaned back against his harness, grinning down at them, when he stopped at the first branch, where he reached out and picked up something and held it up; it gleamed in his hand. He tucked it into his shirt pocket and began to come down, even faster than he had gone up.

    Bailey whistled when he saw the object.

    "That's some fancy piece of equipment," he said in admiration.

    Back at the house, Frank made out a check for Lucky Rosner, who never stopped grinning. After he was gone, they took the bug to the terrace, where Bailey opened it.

    "Still working?" Frank asked. He looked more trou bled than before, older than before.

    "Not anymore," Bailey said.

    "Damn idiots," Frank growled.

    "Stupid way to go about it. Who'd do such a thing, and who'd pay for it? Just plain stupid to call attention to themselves like that to hide a bug."

    "I'm not so sure," Barbara said slowly.

    "You really can't get near either house without being seen. The kids were home from school, Nell in and out, James and Tawna in and out. That must have seemed as good a way as any.

    And it's been up there for months without anyone suspecting a thing." She looked at Bailey.

    "Can you find out where the receiver is? What the range of that thing is?

    Who those men were working for?"

    "Was," Bailey said, touching the bug.

    "Where the receiver was. Even if they've been hanging around, they sure would be packing it in by now."

    "Try," she said.

    "What else do you have?"

    It was not much. He had the names of the scientists, Her bert Margolis, Walter Schumaker, Ruth Brandy wine. And Emil Frobisher, who had died nearly six years ago. If he had been gay, Bailey added, he had kept it a secret. Nothing on Lucas Kendricks before the Sunday he had turned up in a computer store and bought a computer outfit.

    "How much was it? How did he pay?" Barbara asked.

    "Thirty-eight hundred, cash. He bought a tape re corder, too. It was in his pack. No tapes."

    "Wow! And on a Sunday! Okay, let's think. Do you have someone in Denver you can use? Or go yourself?"

    "Denver? Jesus! You think it's hot here, try Denver. To do what?" He looked at Frank.

    "You got any beer?"

    "Oh, sure. Sorry." Frank ambled off in no particular hurry, and while he was gone Barbara began to fill Bailey in on what they had learned from the sheriff and from Lucas Kendricks's parents.

    She was summing it up when Frank came back out with the beer, a pitcher of lemonade, and a bottle of vodka.

    "So, someone hired them to find whatever it was that he had, and I don't think it's turned up yet. What is it? And where was his car for all those years? He probably didn't drive it very far to collect a battery and license plate, maybe not at all. Where was it? Where was he for the last seven years? And I want an inventory of his possessions that were on the body, and in the car. And everything he bought in Denver and Sisters. What all was included with the computer? Anything else?" she asked her father.

    He shook his head and handed her a frosted glass filled to the brim. Bailey opened his beer and they drank in silence for several seconds while he thought.

    He had looked to her for instructions, she realized, when he turned now to her father.

    "This is all going to add up to a bundle, you know."

    Frank shrugged.

    "Our client can afford it, and she's up for murder." His voice was so neutral, so noncommittal that Barbara looked at him sharply. He seemed withdrawn, deep in his own world of thought now.

    "Right. Okay. I'll go, but I'll put on a guy when I get there. And I'll get that inventory before I take off, if they haven't put a tight lid on things. You could do that part," he added to Barbara.

    "I want to keep out of sight as long as possible. Let them think Dad sent you, if it comes up."

    He made no comment but drank his beer, frowning.

    Then he said, "They, whoever they are, spent a mint, looks like. I'll need someone, Hank Littleton, maybe, to go over to see the sheriff, talk to the tracker. You got his name?" Barbara nodded.

    "And Hank can start the hunt here for where the listeners holed up. Probably the fishing camp," he said, nodding toward the cabins below.