Authors: Louis Trimble
“I’m keeping it,” Glory said. “I’ll trade it for Tim’s release. But I’ll give you first crack at it when time comes.”
“You could do better by telling us now,” I suggested persuasively. “We’re working for Tim even if the police aren’t. We need a few leads.”
Glory set her chin stubbornly. “You’d just mess it up,” she said. She began to look as if she would start crying.
I had thought she was sober. She talked rationally enough. But now another of those bewildering changes took place in her. She did begin to cry, and she acted as if she were on a jag. “I want Tim,” she sobbed. “They’ll hurt him. He’s not very strong since he hurt his back.”
I looked at Jeff. I said, “He sprained it playing football—that was two years ago.” Jeff shrugged. We were thinking the same thing: that Tim was strong enough to swing a cleaver.
“Look,” Jeff said to Glory, “if we have a lead we might be able to help straighten things around and get the guy out.” He offered her another cigaret from my pack. When he held the match for her he leaned forward intimately. She used the tips of her fingers to guide his hand to her cigaret. She batted her eyes a little. It might have been caused by the smoke in them. I doubted it. I was disgusted with them both.
But it worked beautifully. Glory stopped crying as suddenly as if she had a switch controlling her emotions. She smiled at Jeff. “I can’t tell you all of it,” she said. Her voice dripped at him. She was perfectly composed again.
“Why not?” Jeff asked. He had dropped the intimate act and moved a little away from her.
“I can’t,” Glory said in a stage whisper. She was turning on the dramatics now. “Don’t you see I can’t?”
I knew what she meant. She felt that same fear I had not long ago in the office. If she really believed, as I did, that Tim Larson was innocent, then a murderer was still loose. A murderer vicious enough to slash a man nearly in two was standing by, waiting, wondering if there was someone who knew too much. Or someone who had seen too much that he hadn’t told yet.
I said softly, “Afraid?”
Glory shook her head, but her eyes told me she lied.
“Personal?”
“Damn it,” she said roughly. “Stop pumping me. I’ll tell you what I can.”
Jeff leaned forward again. “All right,” he said soothingly.
She sat up straighter and grabbed Jeff’s arm. He winced, so evidently it was no loving touch. “Find out why Willow and Hilton were so thick,” she said. “And why Willow kept kissing Carson’s boots. And why his tub of a wife did too. Find out those things.”
“Why?” I asked.
“If I knew I’d tell you,” she said. Her voice was flat again. She had forgotten her dramatics. I wondered what would come next. She let loose of Jeff’s arm. “I meant what I said that day in your office.” She was speaking to me now. “Carson was out to get Daisy and her parents were out to make her marry him.”
Jeff forgot his gallantry. He snorted, actually. “That went out in 1905.”
“She’s scared sick of them,” Glory argued. “And she was of Carson too. It’s the truth. They bully that kid.”
“Can you tell us anything else?” I asked.
Glory performed another change of pace. She giggled. “I can tell you that Hilton thinks he’s in love with me. Will that help?”
“Not unless you assisted him in thinking it,” I said.
“I
’ve got him over a barrel,” she said boastfully. “He knows it too. He knows that I’m smart enough to realize he and Willow are up to something. But he doesn’t know I’m smart enough to let him think I’m in the dark about it.’
This was all gibberish to me. “Look,” I said a little wearily. “We need help—for Tim. Where did you go after dinner. What did you see? All of the things you’re saying won’t help us. The story of what you really saw might.”
“I
wasn’t at dinner.” Glory was sullen now. She looked at me with suspicion. “That’s all I know.”
“Did you hear that Tim admitted arguing with you and throwing you in the lake?”
“Did he? Well, I was wet, wasn’t I
?”
No one spoke. Glory stirred restlessly. “You find the answers to what I told you. Then you’ll have Carson’s killer.”
Jeff got up, cursing cheerlessly. “Meanwhile they’re pounding the kid to pieces at the county jail,” he said.
Glory reversed herself completely. “He can take it,” she said. “He’s tough. Anyway …” And her voice was suddenly vicious. “… anyway, he had it coming to him.”
J
EFF AND
I went into the living room for a consultation. Glory refused to say another word. She just lay back and closed her eyes and looked wan. There was nothing for us to do but go.
“I’ll give her a sedative,” I told Jeff. “Then maybe she’ll stay here and sleep until we can decide what to do.”
“Hop to it,” he said.
I went back into the bedroom. Glory opened her eyes. When she saw who it was she closed them again. I stalked into the bathroom and prowled the medicine cabinet. The iodine bottle with a skull and crossbones prominently on it tempted me. I felt like feeding poison to Jeff too. But I controlled myself and got a sleeping tablet and a glass of water and went back to Glory.
It was amazingly easy to get the pill into her. All I said was, “Medicine. Jeff thinks you need some rest.” She swallowed the tablet and half the glass of water and lay back and shut her eyes. She didn’t say a word. But there was a satisfied smile on her face that made me want to kick her—hard.
Jeff and I locked up and went back to the office to help Jud finish. I did the mailing list. Jeff said, “What if Delhart did catch her with Tim? What is she hiding?”
“She isn’t hiding anything—from you,” I said bitterly.
Jeff chuckled. “How was my acting, O’Hara?”
“Too good,” I said pointedly.
“The case called for psychology,” Jeff said. I caught him winking at Jud. “Anyway, O’Hara, you’ll have to admit I got results.”
“Or laid the groundwork for results,” I said nastily.
“Now, Addy,” Jud said placatingly. He didn’t know what the row was about but he did know me.
I glared at him. Jeff repeated his question. “What is she hiding?”
Jud rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “She wouldn’t hide an affair—not that girl,” he said. “Just what did she say?”
I told him. Including Jeff’s little by-play, which I had to admit, produced results. Jud chuckled over that. He said, “Sounds like riddles to me. She’s trying to throw you off.”
“What about Big Swede overhearing Delhart and Mrs. Willow arguing?” I said. “And I know Daisy is scared of her mother. Someone bruised the kid. It may have been Frew pawing her but …”
“I have a hunch it’s not the simple open and shut case the police want to make it,” Jeff said. “It’s more than a jealousy motive. More than just Tim wanting to hack Delhart for the sake of Glory.”
“Or Frew to protect his Daisy,” I said, ignoring Jeff’s smug look at his pun. “Now what do we do?” I glanced at Jud.
He watched me paste the last label on the rolled-up newspapers. “All for you two,” he said. “Thanks—and off to the wars with you.”
I reached down and patted Bosco who was nibbling at Jud’s shoelace. She dearly loved string and inky paper. She had dined off the front page of the Pioneer and was topping her meal with Jud’s shoelace.
“We’ll go if we get a drink of your whiskey,” I said. “Otherwise we stay and bother you.”
“Not my smelling liquor,” Jud said. He got out his drinking bottle and two paper cups. He sniffed his good whiskey while Jeff and I drank the other. Then we were ready to go. I reminded Bosco to do her duty as a mousetrap and not fill up on paper and we went outside. Jud was staying to close up. Jeff and I proceeded to his car.
“Shall I use Nellie?” I asked.
“We don’t want a fanfare heralding our coming,” Jeff said. “We’ll take mine.”
I removed my bag of old clothes from Nellie and dropped it into the back of his late model sedan. We started for the ranch. The clock on the grocery store said midnight. I remembered what had happened after that hour last night and the trees began to press more closely to the road, and the darkness was again charged ominously. I was thankful for Jeff’s presence.
But I wasn’t going to let him know it. “Just what do you expect to accomplish at this ungodly hour?” I demanded.
“Can you swim?” he asked. He thrust his pipe and tobacco pouch at me. “Fix that.”
“I can swim, yes. Can you?” Before I knew what I was doing I had filled the pipe and returned the pouch. I lighted the pipe and handed it to him, coughing over the strong smoke. “Next time do your own dirty work,” I said. I remembered I was irked with him.
“I like these homey touches,” Jeff said. “No, I can’t swim. That is, not very well. I haven’t the lung power, I mean,” he amended, “I can’t hold enough air to be a good diver.”
“Who’s going to dive for what?”
“You are,” Jeff said cheerfully. “For things. By the dark of the moon, witch.”
I told him what I thought of him and his idea. I ran out of breath and got no place. Finally, I said. “Besides I have no bathing suit. My one and only pre-war model supported a full colony of moths while I was in the army. There isn’t enough left to make a lace doily.”
“The ranch should be full of suits,” Jeff said. “Glory is about your size.”
“Then you’ll be the prowler, not I.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed. He lapsed into silence then and stayed that way until we reached the covered bridge. He pulled the car off to the side just at the spot where I had stopped and let Willow out that first afternoon.
“Can you find the way from here, O’Hara?”
“You pick the loveliest dressing room,” I said. But I realized the sense of stopping here so I chased him away and climbed into the back of the car to change. I felt foolish putting that rough clothing over my best lace-trimmed underwear, but for the most part I was very practically dressed.
We set out then, using our flashlights to reach the little beach. I stayed close to him, feeling again that pressing of the trees and the brush, that ominous darkness. I couldn’t help thinking that these woods might be sheltering a killer. When we left the beach and followed the path toward the lake we shut off our lights and the darkness was more intense than ever. Jeff went ahead, his hands in front of him. I clung to the back of his coat, afraid to lose even that contact with him.
My imagination was playing havoc with me. Trees reached down their long, stiff branches and slapped my face until I wanted to scream. With every touch I could feel a cleaver cutting into my flesh. I wondered if we weren’t all wrong. If it weren’t possible that Delhart had been killed by a homicidal maniac, someone still roaming these woods looking for another victim. I nearly gagged on my own fright.
I sagged with relief when we broke from the forest onto the gravelled path that ran around the ponds. At least here the sweep of dark water gave me a feeling of space. We stopped and looked toward the house.
There was a light on, shining brightly from the living room. Another came on in the upper hall as we watched. A guard made circuits of the house before we moved. We could see his light come around the corner, follow it along the near side of the house and see it disappear as he rounded the other corner. After the second trip Jeff said:
“I’ll have to get through him.”
“Sure,” I said. “Get me that bathing suit, Raffles.”
“It may take a while,” he said airily. “You go park by the dam. Back in the trees and wait for me.
“I’ll hoot like an owl, O’Hara. Like an owl.”
I could imagine it. But all I said was, “Be careful,” and he was gone. I stood there and shook, listening to his footsteps fade away. The darkness was closer than ever now, but I wouldn’t have let him know my fright for anything. We weren’t that well acquainted, I thought idiotically.
I went down to the dam but I didn’t slip back into the trees. I could stand just so much and I knew that if those trees were too close and would press around me again I would get the screaming meemies and probably run out on Jeff. As it was, the darkness and the soft, steady slap of the water against the face of the dam began to work on me. I tried to forget what I had found out on the dam last night. I tried to forget everything. But I couldn’t stop the shakes. I began to wish I hadn’t been so nasty to Jeff. Certainly, I would have enjoyed prowling the house in preference to this sitting and waiting and feeling that I was surrounded with unknown things. I began to regret my own modesty. In this darkness I could have gone in after the manner of Daisy Willow.
Finally, in desperation, I began to count. I watched the house and counted to sixty. Then I crooked one finger and started over again. I allowed Jeff ten minutes to get there, ten inside, and ten to return. I decided I had waited ten minutes before I began counting. But it seemed like centuries. After twenty-five minutes of counting I began to worry.
Suddenly the house blazed with light. I was too far away to hear much but shortly after the light came on I heard what sounded very much like a shot. My stomach flopped over and then I found myself in the bushes, shaking again, but this time for Jeff.
The damned fool, I thought. I wanted to cry. It was all my fault. After all, it was dark and I could have used my lace underwear. Even if it did get ruined it would be better than having Jeff full of bullet holes. I blew my nose and sniffled and wondered what to do.
There were no more sounds now. I began to feel the pressing trees again. I moved onto the path, thinking I had better go to the house, deputies or not. A bush cracked under foot, and someone scuffed gravel. I went rigid and hysterical. A voice went:
“Who-o, who-o.” It was supposed to be an owl hoot!
The next thing Jeff was in front of me. I flung myself onto him and bawled, “You’re safe!”
He untangled me. “O’Hara!”
“Damn it,” I sniffled, “I thought they’d shot you. Oh, Jeff!”
He patted me condescendingly; I could have kicked his shins. He made some crack about not knowing I cared. I said, “Don’t be stupid. You have the keys to the car. That’s what worried me.” I was feeling better.
Jeff said, “I’m the champion second-story man of Oregon, O’Hara. Only I couldn’t get a suit. I only found a cap.”