by Gwen Moffat
‘I didn’t. Fascinating.’ She stretched her legs and sighed blissfully. ‘You have the perfect environment here: temperature, humidity’ – she smiled – ‘even from the human point of view: a small village, friendly people.’
‘You’re seeing it from the outside. We got our problems. This old house now: looks nice, don’t it, but them planks’d be falling apart if I didn’t treat ’em every two years. And motor cars! You gotta hose down a car every day or it’ll rust. It’s the salt. I tell her: she’s gotta get a man to do the painting and the washing off; I got my work cut out with the garden.’
‘Yes, I see the snags. And labour must be at a premium on the coast. There’s too much on this property for one man to attend to.’
‘Otherwise,’ he said, ‘I found my niche.’ He sipped his beer and rocked gently. ‘I got everything a man could possibly want: a little house and a big garden. What else is there?’
‘Companionship?’ she ventured.
‘I got the garden!’
No two ways about it, Willard was simple. Delightful, but how could he be persuaded to gossip about people when the only relationships he recognised were those with plants? And Miriam and Oliver might be home at any time. ‘How much say do you allow Miriam?’ she asked bluntly. ‘In my garden we discuss every move.’
He gave it serious thought. ‘Not much,’ he admitted. ‘Colours, maybe; yes, colours. She’ll say she wants something bright round the pool, show up against the ferns; like skyrocket – the pool area being all wild – and I says no, too damp for skyrocket there; we’ll try some cardinal flowers.’
‘Who wins?’
‘Why, me of course. She wants skyrocket, she gotta have it on a dry bank, like up the back: have as much as she likes there, ’cept I can’t have it interfering with the fritillaries. You should be here in spring: see them scarlet fritillaries. I stole ’em; stole ’em and saved ’em. Know what I did? I gotta friend down in California. He told me about this land scheduled for sub-development and there was scarlet fritillaries on it. I had her drive me down there and me and this guy, we goes into that place even before they puts the survey posts in and we digs up every plant we can find, then we divides ’em equally, him and me. How d’you like that?’
‘Clever. Very clever.’ It could have been the first time she’d heard of a practice that she’d followed all her life: saving plants from the bulldozers. There was a pause, and then she asked him if he grew fruit and vegetables.
‘No, just what you see. I couldn’t manage with vegetables as well as everything else.’
‘Why don’t the others give you a hand? Oliver could do the simpler jobs, the unskilled labour.’
‘Oliver? I’d never have him in my garden!’ He was amazed. ‘He don’t know a fritillary from a nettle.’
‘He could paint the house, wash the car.’
He shook his head, astonished at her lack of perception. ‘You can’t have talked to him, ma’am. That Oliver, he’s like all kids his age: no time for work about the house; he got time only for sports and like, being company.’
‘Yes, he’s good company; a well-mannered boy. He has respect for age; I like that.’
‘So does she. He waits on her hand and foot; now that’s something I never did. But she’s a helpless little thing and she misses having someone look after her, know what I mean? She’s not a woman can live alone, always has to have someone in the house.’
‘No one should live alone. I don’t.’
He eyed her for a moment. ‘You’re different. Men can protect a woman, see? That’s why I’m here. I wouldn’t live in the big house, did for a while but when it came time for me to move on, she built this little place for me, so I agreed to stay because I didn’t want to leave the garden. It’s like family, isn’t it: a garden? And now the only way I’ll leave is when they carries me out. I stay; the others, they just pass through, like migrating birds; they come down to feed a whiles and take off again. He’ll go shortly.’ He nodded towards the big house.
‘Then what?’
‘Someone else’ll come by. Meanwhile I’m here.’
‘You know something, Mr Smith? You’re a happy man.’
‘Oh, sure.’ But he was startled. ‘Aren’t you? If you’re not, change your circumstances, ma’am; you can always do that.’
She beamed at him. ‘I don’t need to. Like you, I can’t think of anything else I want.’ But, looking towards the sea beyond the rhododendrons, her eyes clouded. ‘I’ve made friends here,’ she said. ‘I would like to see this nasty business cleared up for their sakes. Your garden is peaceful; it drove all thoughts of Andy Keller and that poor girl out of my mind.’
‘You got no call to concern yourself.’ He was phlegmatic. ‘It’s nothing to do with any of us; not even with Miz Keller, nor Grace. If he shoots a girl and then himself or falls off the trail, ’tisn’t Miz Keller’s problem – ’cept the shock of it, like losing a dog or a cat. She’s got her friends around.’
‘How do you think Andy died?’
‘I don’t think about it. I got no call to. He were found dead at the bottom of the slide and we’re well rid of him. Mean piece of work, that Keller. It’s all one to me whether he put the bullet in his own skull or someone else did; he’s dead and that’s all as matters.’
She was sitting on her deck drinking tea when she heard the sound of feet padding up her front steps and smiled. She had expected one of them but hadn’t been sure which would appear first.
‘Anyone home?’
‘I’m on the deck, Oliver.’
He came round the outside of the cottage bearing a package. ‘The mistress’s compliments, ma’am, and will you dine with us?’
‘How naughty you are.’ She loosened the wrappings to reveal a bottle of Tio Pepe. ‘And how kind Miriam is. Sit down. Do you drink China tea?’
He was dressed for running and his brown legs were beautiful below the skimpy shorts. ‘You will eat with us?’ he asked anxiously.
‘I’m sorry. I’m dining with Sadie and Leo.’
His face fell. ‘We’ve been looking forward to it, discussing the courses all the way back from Salmon. Stupid of us: as if you’d be free at such short notice. May I use your phone before Miriam gets into high gear?’
He went indoors and she followed to fetch some glasses.
‘She’s devastated,’ he announced when he came back. ‘Oh, you’ve opened the sherry. I’m supposed to be running and I adore Tio Pepe.’
‘You’ll run like a deer.’
‘To Circe and all tempters.’ He raised his glass. ‘You’ve conquered Willard’s old heart.’
‘He won mine.’ She was unruffled. ‘I had an enchanting hour in his – your garden.’
‘He’s a character. His flowers are his children.’
‘So I gathered. He attributed gender to a lily.’
‘I’m sorry we missed you. Miriam would have liked to show you around. Were you waiting long?’
‘But I had a delightful time with Willard! He could talk till the cows come home.’
‘He’s usually so taciturn; he doesn’t have much time for people – ’
‘He was extremely amiable – ’
‘For me, I mean.’
‘Are you sure? I got the impression you were – that you were considered as one of the flowers; you know: a bit exotic, needs training, should do well in the right soil?’
‘Really? How sweet. He said that?’
‘Just my impression.’
‘I’m amazed. I thought he resented me.’
‘Why should he?’
‘You know these old retainers: they get a bit possessive over their employers, think of themselves as one of the family, jealous of house guests, that kind of thing?’
‘He said nothing disparaging about anyone except – ah!’
‘What?’ The ingenuous mask slipped momentarily, the chiselled lips thinned.
‘Except for Andy Keller, but then no one has a good word to say for him. Did th
e man have no redeeming qualities at all?’
He was thoughtful, relieved at the change of subject. ‘Miriam says he could be charming when he tried – but she’s susceptible – and he could lay flattery on with a trowel.’ He snorted in derision. ‘He’d never have got to you though; I saw you watching him: in the Tattler that lunchtime. You got his measure.’
‘He was a bully.’
‘You can say that again – and he was clever with it; he’d back people up against a wall – psychologically speaking – and just as they were about to lash out at him, he’d fade away. I’m mixing the verbal with the physical here but you know what I’m driving at. He was a coward, he always avoided the physical side.’ He grinned. ‘You saw his nose?’
‘I saw it had been broken.’
‘He tangled with the wrong guy. He was at a party in Portland, at Grace’s home, probably gatecrashed it; she wouldn’t have invited him. He musta thought the guy she was talking to looked ineffectual: small, with eye glasses. Andy said something to Grace and this guy drops him: smash, right on the nose.’
‘Wait a minute. You mean, he said something – rude? But he was her step-father!’
‘You didn’t know Andy.’ He was expressionless.
‘Do you have Grace’s address?’
‘No need. She’s coming home this weekend. You want her to confirm what I told you. Now, why is that?’
She filled his glass and he made no comment; he was more interested in the conversation than in running. ‘The police are trying to involve Lois in Andy’s death,’ she said. ‘Even, by implication, in Gayleen’s. Chester is being protective and asked me to try to find out what happened to her gun.’
‘Oh yes, she lost her revolver. Kept it in her night table.’
‘Everyone knows everything in Sundown,’ she murmured, sipping her sherry.
‘Just about. We know all each others’ secrets, yes, but we don’t talk about them.’ Was this a warning?
‘So Hammett said. Have the police got to you yet?’
He smiled slyly as if he’d taken her point. ‘I was grilled by Laddow. It appears that my going to Portland the day before Gayleen was shot is suspicious. They don’t have much to go on, and I’m not a respectable person. They need a scapegoat.’
‘But you didn’t leave the same day as Gayleen did.’
He opened his mouth and closed it again. He drained his sherry. ‘It’s rather awkward,’ he muttered, boyishly embarrassed.
‘You went with Grace?’
‘Now what makes you think that?’
‘Because you and she are the only unattached young people in your circle here … There’s talk. And you don’t have a car but Grace has, and you left around the same time.’
‘And Willard’s been talking.’ She didn’t contradict him. He sighed and settled back in his chair. ‘Miriam’s very good to me; she never had any children and I kinda take the place of a son. But she’s just a little possessive … Some mothers are like that; mine was, oh wow, was my mother jealous! Nothing to it,’ he went on airily, ‘to the Portland trip; I needed to get away for a while, mix with my own age-group, so – yes – I went to Portland with Grace. There, is that a sin?’
‘Of course not. That’s fine.’ She beamed at him. ‘So you have an alibi.’
‘For what?’
‘Didn’t you realise why Laddow needed to question you? He’s investigating murder, my dear. Someone shot Gayleen, and with a .22, and Lois’s .22 is missing so everyone in Sundown is a suspect in Laddow’s eyes. When did you come back?’
‘There’s no way I can be tied to it. I came back next day – no, the Wednesday. You remember: I met you on the beach. I hitched partway home on the Tuesday afternoon and then came on early the next morning when they opened the road.’
‘Tuesday you were in Portland?’
He smiled knowingly, nodding at her. ‘The day they both died I was in Portland. All day. Laddow has the times. And Grace is my alibi. Miriam doesn’t know yet,’ he added grimly, ‘and there’ll be all hell to pay when she finds out. However, they say it rains all the time in Oregon in the winter. Guess I’ll be moving on in the fall.’
‘Arizona is a good place.’
He brightened. ‘Yeah, Tucson. No ocean though.’
‘LA? Malibu?’
‘I’m not cut out to be a California beach boy; too much competition.’
‘The Virgin Islands.’
‘Now you’re talking! The Caribbean.’ He grinned happily at her. ‘I’ll think about that.’
‘I heard you write screenplays.’
‘I’ll write anything. I’ll do anything.’ He was very chipper now, probably visualising lonely widows in the Virgin Islands. ‘I’m versatile. But I have to have a background and on the coast it’s screenplays.’
She was reminded of Gayleen telling Lois how a stripper exploits voyeurs. Aloud she said, ‘So ostensibly you had something in common with Andy Keller.’
‘Ostensibly.’ His eyes narrowed and for a moment she saw, or sensed, below the gaiety and the gloss of charm, below the ability – and the willingness – to amuse, something dark and careful. ‘Andy and I didn’t discuss our common interests,’ he told her. ‘We preferred to avoid each other.’
‘No mistake about it,’ Leo said firmly. ‘The hoots rise in pitch – ’ she turned from the Tattler’s bar and, throwing her voice, imitated an owl’s call to perfection, or so it seemed to Miss Pink.
‘Just as we’d decided to call it a day,’ Sadie put in. ‘She’d kept saying she’d heard it; I hadn’t, but then my hearing isn’t all that good – ’
‘Your hearing’s perfect; you were talking to yourself when it called in the morning, that’s why you missed it. I heard it well enough.’
‘But you weren’t sure. So she insisted we stay up there, just under the crest of Pandora, between the north-west spur and that deep depression that’s absolutely choked with old-growth.’
‘They’ll nest in there,’ Leo told them.
‘Difficult to find an old nest in the fall,’ Boligard said.
Leo turned on him. ‘We wouldn’t look for a spotted owl’s nest at any time! Hell, we’re bothered about going to look for the birds. ’Fact, we have to consider how often anyone’s going to use that trail in the future.’ She glared at them, challenging them to assert their right to use the trail. ‘There’s been enough disturbance as it is; that depression’s within a mile of the slide and they were all over it today looking for that damn gun.’
‘It is a nuisance.’ Sadie shook her head.
‘Nuisance? It’s sacrilege!’ Leo was beside herself. ‘Made me wish for an earthquake, have the whole mountain come down, sweep ’em all off, leave the owls in peace.’
Leo and Sadie, summoned by a note in their door, responding by phone when they returned excitedly from the successful search (except that they hadn’t actually seen the spotted owl) were drinking cocktails with Miss Pink. Eve was serving them, Boligard had stopped by on his way home, Carl was putting the finishing touches to the snapper in the kitchen.
‘They’re in to dinner,’ Eve said.
‘What!’ Leo cried. ‘Not the guys who were searching the slide?’
‘Hammett and Laddow.’
‘Hammett’s back?’ Miss Pink exclaimed. ‘Did they tell you the result of the autopsy?’
‘Laddow just called to say they’d both be down to eat this evening; he said nothing about the autopsy.’
They exchanged glances, a ripple of unease running round the circle. Leo voiced the feeling: ‘I didn’t expect this; I was looking forward to a gourmet meal and now it looks like we’re not going to be allowed to concentrate on it.’
‘You don’t have to ask them,’ Boligard pointed out.
‘Oh, come on!’ Leo was derisive. ‘And sit there wondering what the answer is all through dinner, with the two guys who know only a few feet away?’
But they could and did concentrate on their dinner. When the detectives appeared
– in time to have a drink before they went in the dining-room – Laddow told them that the autopsy had produced no revelations. Too much damage had been sustained in the fall, he said, and a lot more in the succeeding rockfalls – he didn’t look at Sadie and Leo – and if Andy Keller had been shot, there was no sign of it, and no bullet in the body.
Chapter 14
The party broke up early. The snapper was a success but as always when the police were present, there was a constraint on conversation. They could talk about wildlife and the coast, they could not gossip; above all they couldn’t discuss the case.
After dinner, taking their coffee in the bar, Hammett asked permission to join them, which seemed odd until they realised that Laddow was not going to follow. Laddow had disappeared and it was obvious that Hammett had been directed to stay and listen. He could have heard nothing useful. Leo showed signs of belligerence over the disturbance to the owls but he was so bewildered (‘It’s a very big forest, ma’am; surely there’s lots of room … ’) that she thawed a little as she lectured him on habitat and behaviour, and that led to ecology and the question of diversity. Miss Pink, who had had a hard day herself, noticed that Sadie was nodding blissfully in her chair, and by nine o’clock the party broke up. Leo drove everyone home, the police car having disappeared from the front of the Tattler and Miss Pink not fancying her steep little footpath in the dark.
She entered her cottage, switched on the lights and went to draw the curtains. As she did so the telephone started to ring.
It was Miriam. ‘Ah, at last! Are you alone? I’m on my way down: I have to talk to you.’
She was at Quail Run a few minutes later, arriving at the door in pink sweats and slightly out of breath. She declined brandy, said she would like a cup of herb tea but settled for Lapsang Souchong. In the kitchen she asked casually about the evening at the Tattler and Miss Pink said it had been dull owing to the presence of the police. Had Miriam heard about the autopsy? The results were inconclusive.
‘So they still don’t know whether he shot himself or fell off the trail?’ Miriam said.