by M. K. Wren
“Two thousand dollars. Good God, that’s chicken feed—literally—around here. It was the principle of the thing. Principlel” Her mouth twisted in bitter anger. “I don’t know what happened to the money, and I doubt Ted does, but it was his first big responsibility, and he was so proud. And then—well, George found the discrepancy one night when he was working late in the office; he made a habit of working late. He told me about it that night; said he could see no explanation other than theft. I’m not sure he really believed Ted was guilty, but he said he’d have to talk to Aaron about it. I begged him not to tell Aaron; I all but crawled on my knees. But he didn’t understand that, either.”
“Did he tell Aaron?” It was more a cue than a real question; she was lapsing into brooding silence.
“Yes. The next day when the family gathered for the solemn ritual of the cocktail hour. Aaron—what’s the term? Set ’im down. That’s it. Set ’im down good.” She closed her eyes, gripping her glass with both hands. “God, it was—it was like seeing someone flayed alive. The Assyrians used to do that. Called down the wrath of God. Maybe that’s what it’s all about, this feud. Wrath of God. Ted didn’t have a chance to defend himself; Aaron had already tried and convicted him. I suppose the real reason he was so ready to condemn Ted was because he wanted to marry Bridgie. No—to marry Alvin’s daughter. High treason. Hang him from the nearest yardarm. Or cottonwood.”
“Did George take a stand either way?”
“Not against Aaron.” Her voice was thick with disgust. “That would be like taking a stand against himself. I know then I couldn’t go on living married to Aaron’s alter ego. Moment of truth, Conan; that was mine.”
“And Ted’s?”
She sagged back into the cushions, frowning as she raised her glass again.
“He was so hurt, so wounded. I’ve often wondered…”
He waited, then found it necessary to cue her again.
“Wondered what, Laura?”
“Oh…it just seemed like—like this feud…”
“You think Ted has something to do with it?”
She hesitated, then shook her head emphatically.
“I’m as bad as Aaron. I despise him for condemning Ted without a hearing, and now I…Conan, I don’t know. Ted seems so steady and dependable, and he is, but he has the McFall temper, too. I have no reason to think he might be involved. Maybe it’s just that—that I think he’d be justified.” Then she turned away with a long sigh. “Or maybe it’s just the sort of spiteful thing I’d do.”
“I’ve never thought you spiteful.”
She tilted her head and laughed.
“Do you really know me that well?”
He admitted to himself that he didn’t, and he had little faith in self-revelation.
“Was it spite that made you consider a divorce?”Her eyes narrowed, then she laughed again.
“Touché. No, and I wasn’t just considering it; I wanted it. That’s when I found out the word ‘divorce’ is not in the vocabulary of a respectable Mrs. McFall. Impossible. That’s what he told me, standing there like a stone wall. Impossible.” She mulled the word as if she’d examined it so often it had become meaningless. “And when I told him, ‘I want my freedom,’ he just said, ‘Laura, I don’t understand.’”
But Laura had her freedom now. Conan watched her eyes close, lashes trembling against her cheeks as she downed another medicinal draft.
“Would he have contested a divorce if you’d initiated it?”
“Of course, and I had no real grounds; nothing that would make sense in a Harney County court. I didn’t even have any money of my own to hire a lawyer.”
“And it was left at that?”
“For George, yes. Subject closed. Period. I went into a state of deep shock for a while, then I decided I’d go back to San Francisco. I’d still be Mrs. McFall, but the idea of marrying again didn’t appeal to me.”
“But you didn’t go.”
She shook her head slowly. “Inertia, I guess. Besides, I’ve a rather…comfortable life here, you know.” And she began singing in a quavering soprano, “I’m only a bird in a gilded…”
“Laura-”
“Sorry. Not very funny.”
She was drunk, or should have been, but her mind refused to go out of focus. He wondered if she wouldn’t simply get miserably ill before she achieved oblivion.
“None of this is funny.”
“No. Well, anyway, I haven’t…didn’t go. It was partly this feud. George was so tom up about it, I thought it would be better, kinder—now, that is funny—kinder to wait until it was resolved. But it never…” She looked at him in mute appeal, as if he could explain the phenomenon. “It just kept getting worse, and so did the situation here. It ceased to be a family. We were all prisoners here, or—or inmates in some sort of insane asylum. I had the strangest feeling that nothing mattered, that everything was all over; my whole life, all over, and I was too numb to care. And now…he’s gone. Dead. He’s…dead.”
She seemed to be trying to make sense of the word, and trying to respond to its implications, face contorted harshly, hand pressed to her mouth. But not one tear streaked her cheeks. Finally, she sagged limply, staring down at her glass before draining it.
“Empty. Empty again. Fill ’er up? Yes, thank you.” When he reached out and gently caught her arm as she started to rise, she jerked away from him. “Conan, don’t do anything for my own good. Please!”
He pulled in a long breath, then stood up and took the glass from her tense grip.
“I’ll get you a refill.”
“You’re a genuine gentleman. Always were. No water. I can still tell the difference.”
“I don’t believe in diluting good whiskey,” he said lightly.
The bottle on the kitchen counter was almost empty, but he had no doubt another was available. When he returned, he sat down beside her. She seemed nearly asleep, eyes closed, listening to the music.
“That’s lovely,” she murmured. “Beautiful. George never did like Mozart. Oh, God, listen to me. In vino veritas.” Then, seeing the glass, she smiled and took it from him. “Thank you, kind sir.”
He winced at that; he didn’t feel particularly kind.
“Laura, I’m going to ask you a very personal question, so feel free to tell me to mind my own business.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, I will.”
“Why didn’t you and George have any children?”
For a moment, he expected her to accept his suggestion, then she turned to her whiskey and shrugged apathetically.
“You’re good at finding the chinks in the armor, aren’t you? Well, I guess it was blind luck the first two years, and since then I’ve been taking contraceptive pills.”
“Without George’s knowledge?”
“There you go again. Zingo. Right in the chink.” She paused for a long time, staring bleakly into nothingness, then, “That was really despicable, especially with a man like George. Raises specters of impotence; fate worse than…despicable, respectable Mrs. McFall. If I can say that, I’m not drunk. Not drunk enough.” She tipped up her glass thirstily as if to remedy that, then lowered it with a long sigh.
“Oh, Conan, it was a hell of a thing to do, but a—a child is an infant human being; a life in fragile potential. I just couldn’t bring a child into the world—into this world—until I was sure I could make a home for it; a real home. But George—the idea that I might balk at bearing an heir to the McFall dynasty would have boggled his mind. He’d have considered it not only unreasonable but immoral.”
Conan nodded. “It was a terrible decision to have to make, Laura.”
“And I decided terribly, is that it?”
“You’re asking my opinion? I think you were forced to choose the lesser of two painful evils.”
She studied him doubtfully, then laughed.
“I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to talk to a man who isn’t hung up on his…Thanks, anyway.”
“Are you sure George didn’t know?”
“Yes. He was always a little vague and embarrassed about anything associated with the female reproductive system. I used to think it rather boyishly charming.”
“What would he have done if he’d found out?”
“He’d have killed me, probably.” She wasn’t joking, she was quite serious, yet entirely indifferent. “But he wouldn’t have freed me, not even in disgrace. Ah…I’m finally beginning to feel this. Sweet soporific sauce; beautiful sauce of the evening.” She emptied the glass and put it on the table beside her with some care. “So, now I’ll get myself undressed while I’m still able, and crawl into my little trundle bed with my little trundle bottle.”
“Laura, I…I don’t like to leave you alone.”
She laughed and reached out to touch his cheek.
“Then stay. Why not? Give people something else to talk about. Oh, Conan, dear kind sir, I’m sorry. I’m getting messy, aren’t I? Well—” She came to her feet, finding it necessary to accept his supporting hand until she got her balance. “I’ll see you to the door, kind sir, and don’t worry about my being alone. In a very short time, I doubt it will even register.”
She was amazingly steady on her feet as she went to the door and opened it with an ironic little bow. Then she took him entirely by surprise with her next words.
“Conan…kiss me.”
He did, not knowing what to expect, or what she expected of him, and he could only describe it as tender.
“Funny,” she said finally, “you look for—for proof of your own existence…. Never mind. Good night. Thanks for the broad shoulder for crying on.”
But she hadn’t cried. “Laura…”
“Good night.”
He hesitated, then turned away. “Good night.”
The door closed behind him as he crossed the lawn; there was a chill in the air, the scent of frost. No lights showed in the bunk-house or trailers; even the dogs were silent in sleep.
In vino veritas. Laura had given Ted a motive for the feud and herself a motive for killing George. Revenge and freedom. But he was skeptical of truisms, and reminded himself again that he didn t really know her.
CHAPTER 12
A light was on in the foyer, but the old house was as silent as midnight even though it was only a few minutes past eight. Conan went upstairs as quietly as possible in boots and on aged steps with a tendency to complain under pressure. He felt his way down the darkened hall rather than turn on a light and risk waking Aaron, whose fitful snores were audible through the open door of his room.
Conan closed the guest room door before turning on the light, then went to the south window. There was a light over the barn door, but no light or hint of life within; Ted hadn’t yet returned from his moonlight ride.
The closet doors hadn’t been touched. He opened his briefcase and took out the small flashlight, a notebook, and the tool kit; then, after exchanging his boots for a pair of soft slippers, he went back down the hall to Ted’s room.
It was in the north corner of the house, where he could neither see the barn nor hear Ted’s arrival. His work here must necessarily be done quickly, but he went about it with no sense of urgency. For this, and for the training that enabled him to search a room thoroughly, silently, leaving no evidence of his presence, he was indebted to G-2 and a hard-nosed perfectionist who had been his commanding officer.
He pulled the shades but left the door open and depended on the tight beam of the flashlight. It was a random search and the results were commensurately random. He might have drawn a personality profile of the occupant of the room: clean, orderly, little interest in clothing except in functional terms; earnestly proud of the trophies and ribbons rewarding his achievements in sports, animal husbandry, and rodeo competition; touchingly sentimental about his family as evidenced by the collected letters, cards, portraits, and snapshots. A few of them included Bridgie Drinkwater, laughing and exuberant, seeming much younger than the girl Conan had met at the reservoir today. Ted showed engaging spirit in these pictures, and even Aaron McFall was a different man. Conan paused over one snapshot. Aaron posing proudly with his sons, George no more than eighteen then, and all of them smiling. When he finally closed the last drawer, Conan put the shades back exactly as he had found them. Psychological profiles were interesting, but he’d found nothing that seemed to have any bearing on the feud or on George’s murder, with the possible exception of three items discovered in a drawer full of miscellaneous boyhood souvenirs: a handful of blasting caps; a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, an old relic that might have been an antique, but appeared to be in perfect working order; and $1,824 in cash hidden in a cigar box.
The latter wouldn’t have made him so uneasy if it were more than two thousand and not so little less.
He crossed to Linc’s room, pausing to listen for the distant drone of Aaron’s snoring, then went first to the window and looked out to the barn. No sign of Ted yet.
Linc’s room would take longer, he realized, simply because he wasn’t as orderly as his brother, and the detritus of his existence included books, magazines, and stacks of sheet music. Most of these, including some unexpectedly heavy reading ranging from Salinger to Shakespeare, were hidden away at the back of the closet. Two guitars gathered dust there, too; a Goya classic, and a rakish, bright red electric instrument. In the Goya’s case he found a sheaf of sheet music, words and notes penciled in a strong, vertical hand. Linc’s songs; the price of a Mercedes 450SL.
Linc did not share Ted’s sentimentality. Conan had almost given up hope of finding any evidence of a personal life outside the closet, when finally one drawer yielded a small cache of memorabilia, all of it concerned with Charlotte Drinkwater. A studio portrait, autographed “With love from your Juliet,” showed a beautiful girl with shining dark eyes and a piquant smile much like her sister’s. Some snapshots and a newspaper clipping were pressed in a Crane High School yearbook, marking the pages chronicling the crowning of Chari Drinkwater as homecoming queen. The clipping was from the Clarion; the studio portrait, reduced, the smile fey beneath the headline announcing her death. The article told him more about Chari alive than dead; of her death, Jesse Broadbent had chosen to say only that she had died in a diabetic coma a few minutes after admission to the Burns Memorial Hospital.
Another drawer yielded another kind of memorabilia: the casual accumulation cast out of pockets. He smiled faintly at the number of traffic citations. The matchbooks surprised him; he hadn’t seen Linc smoking, but a crumpled package of Camels was also lost at the back of the drawer.
He studied the matchbooks, taking particular interest in one advertising the Longhorn Bar and Grill, and another the Sage Vista Motel, both in Winnemucca, Nevada.
He also took note of the two checkbooks, one issued by the Harney Valley Bank and Trust: a personal account, the checks all in Linc’s writing, a number to various bars in Burns, regular deposits of five hundred dollars on the first of every month. Salary or an allowance, probably.
The second checkbook elicited an uneasy prickling at the back of his neck. The Citizens Bank of Boise. Linc, unlike his father, didn’t always believe in doing business with the locals. Boise was across the state line in Idaho, a hundred miles away, and the largest city in the three-state area. He wondered if a desire for anonymity had inspired the choice. The checks bore no printed name or address.
There were few entries—four deposits and four checks. He took out his notebook and recorded the dates, amounts, and the account number. The pattern was obvious, however inexplicable. Four deposits, all within a few hundred dollars, plus or minus, of six thousand, had been made at three-month intervals over the last year, the final one dated July 27. And without exception, a check for five thousand had been drawn to cash within a few days of each deposit.
He put away the checkbook, made a note of the addresses on the Winnemucca matchbooks, checked the barn again as he opened the shades, then left the room, frowning, but not so preoccupied t
hat he didn’t listen for Aaron’s snoring. A bathroom opened off the short wall to one side of the stairway, and a glance verified his guess that a second door gave access to it from Aaron’s room.
He went through to the second door and stood listening. Even with his eyes accustomed to darkness, he could see nothing except the rectangles of windows. He had no intention of making a search now; Aaron’s sleep was too restless, but there was something he wanted to check in the bathroom.
He eased the medicine cabinet open. There were patent remedies in it that wouldn’t have been available in city drugstores for half a century. He found what he was looking for behind a box of slippery elm lozenges: a prescription bottle of Digoxin, a digitalis preparation. One 1.5 milligram tablet, to be taken each day in the morning. The prescribing physician was Walter Maxwell; it had been filled at the Waite Pharmacy in Burns almost a year ago, but the bottle was still nearly full. Aaron was undoubtedly a difficult patient.
Conan returned to the guest room in time to see Ted ride up to the barn, then took his briefcase and went downstairs to the office. He turned on the light, although there was a window and an outside door on the south wall, and the light would be visible from the barn. But Ted wouldn’t take exception to his being here; for this he had Aaron’s sanction. A few minutes later he heard Ted come into the house and go directly upstairs.
The office was a small room crowded with a sturdy oak desk, three green-enameled file cabinets, an old Mosely safe, and a bookcase filled with ledger books and legal and accounting texts. The walls were decorated with photographs of prize bulls and ribbons from county, state, and national competitions. It seemed ironic that a million-dollar business was conducted from this cramped, styleless room.
Knowing George’s orderly, accountant’s mind, Conan almost expected the desk to be neatly cleared, but it wasn’t. Several ledgers lay open, along with a scattering of invoices, receipts, and notes torn from a memo pad. He sat down in the wooden swivel chair, wondering what had induced George to leave his work so precipitately last night. Something unexpected. If he’d had five minutes’ warning, or if his leavetaking had been a deliberate decision arrived at without outside influence, the desk would have been put in order.