by M. K. Wren
The ridgepole of the house groaned and collapsed in a roaring avalanche, flinging up an explosion of sparks and flaming embers, and only Amanda wasn’t distracted by that awesome convulsion. She lunged for Clare, hands outstretched, fingers spread in a raptor’s reach. Adler pushed her away, and she fell back with a guttural cry, fell with an odd jerking motion to the ground.
Conan stared at her. It didn’t make sense, the way she had fallen; there was something wrong about it. Something wrong about the way she lay motionless now, the rain beating at her face, descending embers extinguished like snowflakes melting when they struck her rumpled clothing. Clare’s cries faded as Delia and Adler hurried her toward his house.
Conan was the first to reach Amanda, but Newbolt was close behind him, demanding, “What happened? What in God’s name happened?”
She was dead, and the dark patch on her bosom was an exit wound. Conan reached that conclusion because now he knew where the bullet had come from. He hadn’t heard the report, not against the deafening crash of the house’s collapse, but now he saw Reuben Sickle, his rifle cradled on one arm, limping out of the darkness beyond the trees. He moved at a solemn, measured pace, his posture sternly erect, his scarred face reflecting grave regret. Sheba followed at his heels, tail down and ears back.
Reub stopped a pace away from the body and looked down on it. Then he asked, “Sheriff, did I kill her?”
Newbolt’s jaw went slack. Finally, he nodded. “You killed her, Reub. Why?”
Reub looked past Newbolt to the fire, and his clear blue eyes seemed the only thing left on this night of disaster that remained as a testament of summer skies and gentleness. He said, “You saw her. She was goin’ to kill Delia.”
“Delia?” Newbolt frowned. “But she—”
“Revenge, Sheriff,” Conan put in quickly, with a glance at Reub. “This is Amanda Count. I guess since Tom is dead, she decided to revenge herself on Tom’s widow.”
Newbolt considered that, then shrugged irritably. “For Lee Langtry’s murder? Damn, the man wasn’t worth revenging.”
Conan nodded, staring at the rain-spattered face of Amanda Count. “Probably not, Sheriff, but she loved him.” …the only beautiful thing that ever happened to me in my life… Then Conan looked up and met Reub’s eyes. “It’s amazing what people will do out of love.”
Chapter 19
Conan stood on Dex Adler’s front porch and watched an ambulance lurching off down the road. Clare had been diagnosed by the paramedic as in shock and possibly suffering from a mild stroke. Delia rode with her.
Amanda Count’s shrouded body waited at the hotel for the arrival of another ambulance. Conan wondered where she would be buried.
He looked at his watch. There was ample light here: bright, white, electric light. Adler had started his generator since his house had become an informal disaster relief headquarters. Two-fifteen. It was all over now, as Lettie Burbage put it, but the shouting. She and the other townspeople had returned to their homes. Dry clothes and other necessities had been provided for the survivors, the salvaged furniture moved into Adler’s spare room, offers of assistance and reassurance reiterated. Even Sheba had been offered a temporary home at the hotel. So had Conan Flagg.
There was no wind behind the rain that pattered lightly on the porch roof; the storm had spent itself and the fire nearly so. The chimneys surmounted a black ruin where the last flames fought over the remains, and it was only now that Conan began to realize the full scope of the loss represented in that hideous pile. The ghost of Asa Starbuck seemed to take shape in the whorls of smoke. The piano that had come around the Horn to Silver was gone, the Tiffany-shaded lamps, the exquisite Kirman, the handmade spread on his bed, the nickel-plated cookstove, the Waterford crystal and Coleport china, the irreplaceable books and photographs, even the jars of strawberry jam that had only yesterday been stored away for the coming winter. A piece of history was lost here, and Conan was beginning to understand Silver City and why its survival was so important.
And more was lost: a home. A home in a sense few people living now had ever experienced.
Conan closed his eyes and leaned against the roof support, wondering absently when he had ever felt so exhausted, mentally and physically, or so miserably wet and cold, and wondering if he couldn’t have prevented this somehow. Perhaps he was only salving his sense of inadequacy in thinking that Amanda Count’s determination would have shaped this end whatever he did.
Newbolt’s car was parked a short distance away where the light from the porch limned the star on the door. A shadowy figure waited in the back seat. Reub Sickle.
Conan heard voices at the door behind him and turned. Newbolt and Adler emerged. Newbolt was saying, “Let me know about Clare, Dex. Anything I can do, just holler.”
Adler nodded. “Thanks, Andy. Jake called Delia’s daughter—she lives down near Nyssa. Kathleen and her husband are going to meet us at the hospital in Homedale.”
“You’re drivin’ down tonight? Well, be careful. That road’ll be tricky after all this rain.” Then he touched the brim of his hat with his fingertips as he nodded to Conan. “Mr. Flagg. You got a place to stay tonight?”
“Jake Kulik is putting me up. What about Reub? Will you book him?”
Newbolt looked toward the car, frowning. “Don’t have much choice on that. It’ll mean a trial, but I don’t figure it’ll go hard for him. I hope not, anyhow.”
“So do I,” Conan said dully, trying not to think about Reub Sickle in prison; it would kill him as surely as his bullet had killed Amanda Count. “Sheriff, just out of curiosity, what brought you to Silver tonight?”
Newbolt gave a short laugh. “We had a call from Laurie Franklin at the hotel. Said there was a gang of motorcycle toughs in town squirrelin’ around and tearin’ up the place.”
“A call from Laurie?” No, not from Laurie. That call could only have come from Amanda, who wanted the sheriff on hand when Clare’s guilt was revealed in the contents of the briefcase.
There was galling arrogance in that, a manic daring in engineering a disaster on the basis of an assumption about Clare. But the assumption had proved itself.
Newbolt went on, “I asked Laurie about that call. She never made it. Don’t suppose we’ll ever know for sure who did.” He eyed Conan speculatively. “Probably a hell of a lot about this whole thing we’ll never know for sure. Well, I’d better get goin’. Stop in at the courthouse before you leave the county, Mr. Flagg. I’ll need a statement.”
“I’ll stop tomorrow on my way home.”
Newbolt nodded, then resettled his Stetson and walked out into the rain to his car. Adler turned to Conan, sighed, and said, “You’d better come inside.”
There was a fire in the hearth. Adler offered him a blanket, then motioned toward the armchairs facing the fireplace. “Get yourself warmed up. And I don’t know about you, but I could use something to warm me up on the inside.” He went to the kitchen, returned with two glasses and a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, and put them on the low table between the chairs. He didn’t bother about a chaser as he poured the whiskey, and after handing one glass to Conan, slumped into the other chair and stared into the fire. “I used to like watching a fire. I mean, like this, in a fireplace. Don’t know if I ever will again.”
Conan pulled the blanket around him and tasted the whiskey; it burned his smoke-seared throat. He studied Adler silently and didn’t find his change of attitude surprising. Adler had not only experienced a great deal in the last two hours, but had undoubtedly learned a great deal.
Finally, Conan asked, “You have the briefcase here?”
Adler nodded, still staring fixedly into the fire, then after a moment he rose and went to a bedroom. When he returned, he put the briefcase on the table. “I figure you’ve got a right to see this.”
The briefcase was gray and crackled with age, the metal catches pocked with corrosion. Conan wondered where Clare had kept it all these years. Somewhere in her room, probably, so wel
l hidden Amanda hadn’t found it when she searched the room. And probably so well hidden in Clare’s muddled mind that she had herself lost it until faced with a crisis whose terrible reality forced her to remember. But why hadn’t she simply let the fire destroy this evidence of her guilt—the proof, as Amanda called it? That would have been a rational choice, one that might have killed, finally, the beast of guilt and remorse that lived within her, but the beast wouldn’t permit its own demise.
Amanda had understood that very well, and had used it. But she’d been driven by her own beast.
Adler pried the recalcitrant catches back, then emptied the contents of the briefcase on the table. It made a small mountain of paper-banded bundles of twenty- and fifty-dollar bills. Two other objects fell to the table with a metallic clink. One was a gold wedding band. Conan leaned forward to pick up the other: a pocket watch on a heavy chain. A Greek key design was incised on the case.
All our anniversaries would be golden. Conan put the watch down beside the ring. “Lee didn’t have these with him when he was killed. He must have left them at his house.”
Adler nodded. “Don’t know why Clare kept ’em with the money, but it’s hard to figure how her mind worked. But I’m sure of one thing: she couldn’t have killed Lee except in self-defense.”
“I know. You saw her follow Lee to the office that night, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Then the next day I found a stain on the floor in Tom’s office. I suppose Lettie told you all about that.”
Conan smiled briefly. “Yes, of course.”
“I didn’t know Lee was dead then. It never crossed my mind that Clare might’ve killed him. I thought that blood was hers—he practically broke her nose, you know—and I figured it just meant she had a fight with Lee before he and Amanda left with the payroll. That’s why I didn’t say anything about seeing Clare go to the office. I didn’t think she needed to have it brought out in public that she’d been right there when her husband took off with another woman.” Adler paused, looking into the fire. “Then when Lee’s body turned up last month, I had to change my mind, but I didn’t find out for sure what happened till Delia started talking about hiring a private detective. Reub got wind of that and came to see me. He was at the office that night, outside at the window. He saw the whole thing.”
“And disposed of the body for Clare, as well as getting rid of Amanda and cleaning up the office?”
Adler looked at Conan, eyes narrowed. “Yes. You’ve got it all figured out pretty well, don’t you?”
Conan shrugged. “What about the note? Clare forced Lee to write that at gunpoint, didn’t she, before Amanda arrived?”
“Yes. Reub says you have that note now.”
“No one has it. It was in my room.” It only occurred to him now that he had incurred losses in the disaster, too, but a few clothes and his specially equipped briefcase seemed trivial; they could be replaced. He added, “I didn’t take the note from Reub, by the way. Amanda did. I found it in her room at the hotel.”
Adler only nodded, then, “Damn, I can’t understand why I didn’t recognize Amanda. I knew her; saw her nearly every day for two years.”
“That was a long time ago, Dex.”
“A hell of a long time ago. Anyway, Reub told me what really happened the night Lee died. When I couldn’t talk Delia out of bringing you in on it, well…” He had to brace himself with some whiskey before he could go on.
Conan concluded for him, “So, you and Reub formed your rather inept conspiracy to drive me out of Silver.”
“Well…yes. I’m sorry about that.”
“It doesn’t matter; not now. Dex, did Delia see this?” He nodded toward the pile of money.
“Yes. Soon as we got Clare calmed down and in bed, Delia had to see it. Didn’t seem to surprise her, really. All she said was, ‘Poor Clare—all these years.’”
That seemed to sum it up. Conan shivered and emptied his glass in one swallow. Strange, he couldn’t seem to feel the whiskey, and under the circumstances it should hit him hard. Then he rose and began stacking the bills while Adler put them back in the briefcase.
At length, Adler dropped the ring and watch into the case and closed it. “Don’t know what I’m going to do with this money. By rights it should be Delia’s and Clare’s, but I’d just as soon not have to explain that to the IRS. Oh—there’s something else you might be interested in.” He rose and reached into his back pocket. “Reub gave it to me tonight. Said Clare should have it. It’s hers.”
It was the cameo brooch. “Reub found it in the office?”
“Yes. I asked Delia what I should do with it.” A smile briefly softened the dour lines of his face. “She gave it to Clare, told her Reub had found it somewhere. Clare…well, she didn’t really know what was going on, I don’t think, and she could hardly talk, but she seemed to recognize Reub’s name. Told Delia to give the brooch back to him. She wanted him to have it. It’ll mean a lot to him.”
“Sometimes I think Clare understands more than she realizes. Well, Dex, you have a long drive ahead of you.”
Adler went to the hearth and began pulling the fire apart with a poker. “Wait a minute and I’ll drive you down to the hotel. You don’t look like you’re up to the walk tonight.”
Conan laughed. “You may be right about that. Thanks. And I’m glad we ended up on the same side.”
Adler closed the fire screen, then turned to Conan with an oblique smile. “Well, I guess we always were on the same side. Sorry it took me so long to see it that way.”
Chapter 20
Conan lost sight of the Owyhees when he reached Homedale, and he stopped for lunch at Max’s Café not because he was hungry, but because he needed to reorient himself. This prosperous little farm town seemed ideal for that, with its shops busily vending their prosaic wares; its wide streets full of cars and trucks, the flow of traffic occasionally interrupted by the passing of a clattering freight train; and the conversations around him in the café concerned with weather, crops, inflation, taxes, and the inadequacies and general damnfoolishness of the government.
And Silver City, that paradoxical Shangri-la hidden in the wild reaches of the Owyhees, began to fade into temporal as well as spatial distance. Not that he would ever forget what happened there last night. He had walked up to view the ruins of the Starbuck house this morning. They were still smoking. But the crab apples bloomed, oblivious, against the hauntingly blue sky, and an eagle plied the winds high over War Eagle Mountain.
When he left Homedale, Conan followed the oasis of the Snake River Valley across the state line into Oregon, and at that point, he began thinking seriously of home, of the house by the sea that was his personal castle, of the Holliday Beach Book Shop and Miss Beatrice Dobie, who would upon his return ask with arch subtlety about the case. And Meg. No doubt he’d have to endure at least a day of the Treatment. That Siamese aristocrat did not approve of her minions leaving her, especially Conan, and always evinced her displeasures by haughtily disdaining his every attempt at reconciliation until she was sure the point was taken.
But Conan wasn’t entirely finished with Silver City yet. He didn’t turn west beyond the Snake, but north, following the green belt of farmland flourishing and nourished by the river’s waters. A sign warned him when he was ten miles south of the farm community at Nyssa; he slowed and began checking the mail boxes at the roads leading to farm houses. At length, he found the box marked “James and Kathleen Spalding.” He drove down a gravel road toward a rambling house with the spick-and-span look of fresh paint, surrounded by bright flower beds and a well-tended lawn.
The doorbell was answered by the lady of the house. Kathleen Starbuck Spalding, an attractive woman who was handling middle age very nicely, looked so much like her mother that Conan was startled. She apologized for the disreputable state of the house as she led him through the living room—although to his eyes it was spotless—and for the absence of her husband and son, who were at a cattle auction in Payette. She
took him out to a terrace where Delia was sitting at a wrought-iron table shaded by cottonwoods. She rose, reaching out for his hand. “Conan, I’m so glad to see you. Are you all right?”
He reassured her on that point, but got no further. He was plied with iced tea, then there were more introductions: Marian Spalding, Delia’s granddaughter-in-law; then Hugh, Delia’s great-grandson, who, she proudly informed Conan, would celebrate his sixth birthday next week. Hugh, a vigorous towhead, was more interested in his toy rifle than in Conan, but the two Mrs. Spaldings were obviously, if politely, curious. However, the conversation didn’t get far past the amenities before Kathleen began making renewed apologies. She and Marian had to go to a cake sale at the Grange; they’d promised to preside over the sales as well as contributing their culinary offerings. Hugh was induced to leave his ersatz lethal weapon on the table, and finally all three departed. Delia sighed her relief and poured more tea for Conan, then sat down across the table from him.
She put Hugh’s toy out of sight on the ground. “I don’t know why people think little boys have to play with guns.” Then she smiled to herself. “Kathy and Marian were ready to forget the cake sale when I told them you were coming, but I finally talked them into going, so I’d have you to myself.”
He smiled at that and sipped at his tea; like the tea Delia had served at Silver, it was strong and sweet, a welcome antidote to the afternoon heat. “Delia, how is Clare?”
She shook her head slowly. “Not good. The doctors say she had a stroke. Dex had her moved to a hospital in Boise.”
“Yes, that’s what Sheriff Newbolt told me.”
“You stopped by the courthouse this morning?”
“Newbolt wanted a statement. I gave it to him, although parts of it were somewhat edited.”