Verdict Suspended (11 page)

“No, Jaime, please!” she said. “It isn’t important … not to you!”

“Then I won’t want to keep it,” Jaime said. He ignored Tilde’s eyes and ripped open the envelope. A sheaf of papers were held together with a heavy paper clip. The top paper was a police photo—front and profile. The subject was Cy.

“Cyril Sheldon,” Jaime read slowly, “convicted of armed robbery …”

“It was a long time ago,” Tilde begged. “Please, Jaime. I only want to destroy it before Steve settles the estate.”

Jaime flicked through the pages. Documentary evidence of Cy’s conviction and prison term nearly twenty years ago.

“He was a boy!” Tilde said. “Barely eighteen. She found out and held it over him.”

Jaime was confused. “Sheilah did that?”

“Yes, our sainted Sheilah!”

“But why? She and Cy got along fine.”

“Of course they did! What else could Cy do? But three years ago when he had a chance to go into a partnership in Phoenix and make a fortune for himself, Sheilah wouldn’t let him. She needed him here, she said. Then she showed him these things.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Jaime protested. “She could get another contractor.”

Tilde’s eyes were wide and dry and impatient with the child she was trying to teach. “Of course she could! … But she didn’t want to! She wanted to hold Cy. She wanted power. You know how much she wanted power…. But she was clever. She made Cy believe she was doing him a favor. He might get in trouble someday. His past might come out. But here she could save him. Her name could protect him.” Tilde’s voice was bitter. “She made him feel grateful for being one of her puppets!”

Jaime didn’t listen to the bitterness. He listened to the facts. “How long have you known about this?” he demanded.

“For two years,” Tilde said. “I wanted to come for it while you were away with Greta, but every day there was something to stop me—reporters, policemen.”

“Policemen?”

“They still ask questions. I pay no attention. We had an inquest. It’s over. Jaime, please …”

She held out her hand for the envelope. Jaime ignored the gesture.

“How did you know the combination to the safe?” he asked.

“I didn’t. I had to look for it in the drawers.”

Jaime gravely returned the papers to the envelope. He closed the flap; then, with Tilde’s eyes protesting, shoved it into his coat pocket.

“No, Jaime! You don’t need that!”

“Maybe I do. Your policemen reminded me: Sheilah’s murder isn’t solved.”

“But Cy had nothing to do with that!” And then Tilde stopped pleading. Her hands tightened to angry fists. “We covered for you!” she said. “You owe us something for that!”

“Covered?” Jaime echoed. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean! Cy was almost in trouble when the District Attorney asked who was in charge of materials for the Cultural Center job. But the District Attorney had only rumors—no facts. You know why those supplies were tied up, Jaime. You ordered from wholesalers Cy never used—they were too unreliable. But you had a reason. You got your own price. What do they call it, Jaime? A kickback?” Tilde was like a cornered mother bear fighting for her young. She spat the accusation at him.

“There was nothing wrong with it,” he protested. “The suppliers paid me the bonus—not Sheilah.”

“But the police might not see it that way. They aren’t as romantic as Cy and me. We knew you needed money to marry Greta. We knew Sheilah would never let you marry—anyone. You were her prize puppet. She held the strings tight … right where they hurt! At the purse!”

Tilde was one insult away from hysteria. “Give me the envelope, Jaime!” she cried, and then she came at him with those ridiculous little fists peppering at his face and chest. He had to do something. His hand flicked out and caught her hard across the mouth. He saw her face freeze before him, one last, outraged epithet caught silent in her throat; and then she faded back against the wall and glared at him with all the barriers of tact and self-interest shattered.

“What are you going to do now?” she choked. “Kill me … too?”

The accusers were accumulating: Trench, Chad Winter, the Moores—now Tilde. But none so frank as Tilde, or so frightened. Jaime left her cowed against the wall of Sheilah’s office. He kept the envelope. Under the circumstances, it was a kind of insurance.

And he cherished Tilde’s fear. It was beginning to appear that nobody but the jurymen believed he hadn’t killed his sister, and they, possibly, only because they weren’t locals with private grudges against Sheilah’s wayward brother. But Tilde was afraid. It was the one bright spot in the cloud hanging over his memory.

The telephone was ringing in Cy Shepherd’s office, shrill, demanding, insistent … Outside, in the service yard, Cy scribbled a signature on the delivery receipt and handed it back to the driver. He watched the truck drive away and turned, scowling, to examine the delivery. Lumber. Number 1 Douglas fir. Three deliveries to get a stock that wasn’t green. The telephone shrieked again. Cy adjusted the baseball cap on his head and started for the stairs. He took exactly three steps and then stopped to watch Jaime’s convertible pull into the yard.

Jaime wasn’t smiling. He stepped out of the car and strode toward Cy, tugging at the envelope in his pocket. Cy recognized it on sight.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded.

“I found Tilde rifling Sheilah’s safe,” Jaime said.

Cy Shepherd didn’t tan; he reddened. By the end of the summer the red was a deep brick hue. Shock put a tight white line about his mouth and nostrils. “Tilde wouldn’t have the nerve!” he said.

Jaime didn’t answer. He calmly opened the envelope and took out the police report.

“Damn it!” Cy said. “That doesn’t mean anything!”

“Then why did Tilde want it?”

“How should I know? She’s a woman. She scares easy.”

“What scares her?” Jaime protested. “The police? She said they’d been asking questions. Why, Cy? Why did they come to you?”

The telephone started ringing again. Cy glanced longingly toward the stairs. Jaime stepped in front of them.

“All right,” Cy said, “if you must know, it was about the Cultural Center job. It’s running way over budget. Some smart detective got the idea Sheilah might have caught someone padding the bills.”

“You?”

Anger made the line about Cy’s mouth whiter. “Anyone who had a chance…. I didn’t tell him about this lumber. Look. I had to send it back three times to get something fit to use. What was your cut, Jaime?”

Jaime stared fixedly at the pile of lumber. He’d gone to Sheilah’s office looking for a clue to a piece of lost time…. Lumber … He answered slowly. “I thought it was good stuff when I ordered it. What do I know about lumber?”

“That’s what I mean,” Cy said. “Why did Sheilah put you in a spot like that?”

“She wanted me to learn the business.”

“You?” Cy’s brick-red face deepened several tones. “Why you?”

Cy was transparent, and Jaime missed nothing. “That was before I met Greta,” he said. “What’s the matter, Cy? Did she offer you a partnership? Is that why you put up with this?” He held up the envelope.

“I told you. That doesn’t mean a thing!” Cy insisted. “Sheilah checked on me several years ago when we started to work together. She was fair. She showed me what’s in that envelope and I was ready to leave town. She said she didn’t care about it as long as we worked well together.”

“That isn’t Tilde’s story,” Jaime protested. “She says Sheilah held it over you so you couldn’t strike out on your own.”

“Tilde doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” Cy shouted. “Why would I want to break with Sheilah? I never had it so good! And you, Jaime—” He reached out and grabbed Jaime’s lapel. “Look at this jacket: … two hundred dollars, hand-tailored! Without Sheilah, you’d be wearing dungarees!”

Jaime carefully, deliberately removed Cy’s hand from his lapel. “I’m beginning to think I might like that,” he said. “At least I’d know who was wearing them.”

Cy was a big man: shoulders, arms, fists. Jaime had always been in awe of him. But suddenly he didn’t look big. His body sagged. He glared at Jaime. “Jaime,” he said, “what are you trying to do?”

“Learn who killed my sister,” Jaime said.

“Don’t be a fool! Let the police do that. You pay taxes!”

“Not for gossip,” Jaime said. “Not for rumors and innuendoes. That’s the only thing you can still get free.”

“You can hurt yourself!” Cy warned.

It was peculiar how many people insisted on telling Jaime that. He was beginning to resent it. “Maybe that’s a part of it,” he said. “Maybe I have to hurt myself to get rid of Sheilah Dodson’s bad-boy brother. Maybe I need to hurt myself.”

The telephone started screaming in the office again. It was as impatient as a woman’s voice.

“Answer it,” Jaime said. “It’s Tilde calling to tell you that I attacked her in Sheilah’s office. Believe anything she tells you about me as long as it’s bad. Everybody else does.” Jaime started to turn away. He remembered the envelope in his hand and looked back at Cy again. “Just a thought,” he added. “If you did pad those books, you wouldn’t want me nosing about, would you?”

And then all of Cy’s much-vaunted loyalty for Sheilah fell away and left a bitter, twisted face where the mask had been. “Don’t be an idiot!” he said. “I’m one person Sheilah knew she could trust. With what she had on me, what could I do?”

Monuments. Everybody built them … of steel, or brick or straw. The foyer of the hospital was empty when Jaime returned. The last time he’d seen it was the day he walked out with Captain Lennard, a pair of uniformed policemen, and a corps of news photographers. The day he’d been taken to the inquest into Sheilah’s death.

At the reception desk he asked for Dr. Pitman. He was in luck. Would he see Jaime Dodson? Of course he would. The receptionist’s eyes sparked questions she couldn’t ask and Jaime wouldn’t answer. He took himself to Pitman’s office.

The hospital director was a broad, blunt man; heavy shoulders, close-cropped silver hair, sharp blue eyes that diagnosed Jaime’s problem before he could phrase it. He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a medical file.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “Do you want to read this, or shall I?”

“Just tell me the parts I can understand,” Jaime said. “What happened to me the night Sheilah died?”

Pitman adjusted a pair of black-rimmed glasses and picked up the folder. “You damned near broke your neck,” he said. “Your car hit a road barrier at Hanson’s Pier. You were thrown clear and landed on your head. You should have lain there; but you didn’t. You got up and walked about two hundred feet to a merry-go-round operated by one Domingo Alvarez. He was giving his grandchildren an after-hours ride. He saw you—blood dripping down your face. You collapsed. He stopped the merry-go-round and sent one of the grandchildren for the police. I can give you several technical reasons why you survived …”

“Never mind,” Jaime said. “What I want to know is … was I drunk?”

“No. So far as we know, you had one martini—at Sheilah’s.”

“Only one?”

“So far as we know.”

“Then I didn’t crack up because I had too much to drink.”

Pitman didn’t answer. He waited for Jaime to find his own way home.

“Did anyone see the accident?”

“No. A garage owner—Herb Catcher—was working late. He heard the crash but was under a car. By the time he crawled out, the Alvarez youngster came screaming for the police…. The skid marks indicate you were traveling at about a hundred miles an hour.”

“Running,” Jaime said. “I must have been running from something.”

He stared at the top of Pitman’s desk. It was an extraordinarily clean desk. A small stand-up calendar. A square gold clock. Time: Two forty-seven. A letter opener. A letter file … He looked up.

“I was unconscious when I was brought here—is that right?”

Pitman rocked back in his chair. “You were breathing,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Then I couldn’t have said anything coherent.”

Pitman removed his glasses and leaned forward, arms on the desk. “Jaime,” he said, “what is it you want to know?”

“There were two psychiatrists who examined me before the inquest,” Jaime said. “State psychiatrists. They gave testimony in court to the effect that I was sane, but I had a mental block as a result of the accident and couldn’t recall anything immediately preceding the flight from Sheilah’s house.”

Pitman nodded affirmation. “Koffman and Joyce,” he said. “Good men.”

“But there was another one. Steve hired him. He didn’t tell me. I learned by accident from Lennard. He wasn’t at the inquest.”

“Apparently it turned out negative,” Pitman said.

“What?” Jaime asked.

“The experiment. Steve called in his own man to try to penetrate the block with an injection of sodium amytal. One of the staff nurses prepared the injection. I administered it. Then Dr. Curry took over.”

“Curry?”

“Dr. Howard Curry. Steve brought him up from Los Angeles. I wasn’t in the room when the questioning took place. I had a board meeting. When it was over Curry was gone. Steve was gone. You were asleep. Negative.”

“I wonder why Steve didn’t tell me.”

The glasses had heavy black rims. Pitman’s hands toyed with them on the desk. “Steve wants you to forget everything that has to do with Sheilah’s death,” he said. “And he’s right. You can’t do yourself any good this way.”

“Do you think a prowler killed Sheilah?”

Pitman shoved back his chair and came to his feet. “Jaime,” he said, “if it helps me to keep doing my work—and do it the way the people who depend on me expect me to do it—then I’ll
make
myself believe a prowler killed Sheilah.”

It was Jaime’s cue to leave. He started to turn away. He stopped. Across the room, wide plate-glass doors opened out onto a balcony overlooking the village. Beyond them he could see a few red tile roofs, a cluster of palm tops churning in the afternoon wind, a narrow wedge of unbearably blue sea. He walked to the windows and drew the blinds. The village and the light disappeared. He turned away from the window and looked at Pitman, who was now a man without a face standing in shadow.