Some sentence. Some Mrs. O’Daniel, too. She had a better reason than that for wanting to see me; and I had a pretty fair idea what it might be. She hadn’t had dinner with her husband last night, either, or found out about me that way. He’d reminded her on the phone yesterday that he was leaving from the office for some lake in the area, to spend the weekend on a houseboat.
But I said, “You knew Mr. Randall pretty well, did you?”
“Oh yes. I met him when Frank and I were married several years ago. His death was a terrible shock.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“Such a tragic accident,” she said. She had lowered her voice a couple of octaves and given it a sepulchral tremor; it sounded only about half sincere, like an undertaker sympathizing with somebody else’s loss. “That garage of his . . . well, it was an awful firetrap. I don’t know how many times Frank and I warned him to clean it up.”
I said something noncommittal.
“The police said that’s where the fire started—in the garage. Spontaneous combustion. I suppose your findings concur with that?”
“So far they do, yes.”
“So far? You mean you think the fire might have started somewhere in the house?”
“I mean it’s possible the cause wasn’t spontaneous combustion.”
She took a large bite out of her gin and tonic; she looked vaguely uneasy now. “I can’t imagine what could have caused it then,” she said.
“A match, maybe.”
“Match? You don’t mean arson?”
“It’s possible. I haven’t ruled it out yet.”
“But that’s absurd!”
“Your husband doesn’t think so. Neither does Martin Treacle.”
“They don’t believe the fire was deliberately set.”
“They admitted the possibility.”
“I don’t believe it either. It was an accident.”
I waited, not saying anything.
Pretty soon she said, “Those people in Musket Creek . . . are they the ones you suspect?”
“I don’t suspect anyone, Mrs. O’Daniel. Not yet anyhow.” I paused. “But it could be one of them; they all seem to have had good reason to hate Randall.”
“I suppose so. I know very little about their problems with Northern Development; I’m not a woman who takes an active interest in her husband’s business activities.”
I felt like grinning at her: she just wasn’t a very good liar. “You don’t know any of the Musket Creek residents personally, then?”
“Of course not.” She said it too quickly, seemed to realize that, tried to cover herself by saying something else, and botched that too: “Why would I have anything to do with anyone who lives in the backwoods?”
“Lots of people live in the backwoods,” I said. “Writers, gold hunters, homesteaders. Artists.”
She made the rest of her drink disappear. She didn’t look at me while she did it.
Time to back off on that angle, I thought. I asked her, taking a new tack, “Did your husband tell you about the threatening note he received?”
“Yes, he told me.”
“You don’t sound very concerned about it.”
“Why should I be? It was nothing but a crank note, like those telephone calls we kept getting last year. I’m sure Frank mentioned those?”
I nodded. “And did he also tell you that Jack Coleclaw attacked him in his office yesterday?”
“Well, he said there’d been a minor altercation. But he didn’t elaborate.”
“It wasn’t so minor. If I hadn’t been there, your husband might have been badly hurt.”
She looked at her empty glass, seemed to want to get up and refill it, then just sat there with it in her hand. Her face revealed nothing. Maybe she had a hard shell that was full of feeling on the inside, like a piece of rock candy with a liquid center. Or maybe she just didn’t give a damn about her husband’s welfare. I thought it was probably the latter; the way it looked to me, the only person Helen O‘Daniel cared about was Helen O’Daniel.
I said, “Let’s get back to Munroe Randall. I understand he was quite a ladies’ man.”
She stiffened a little. “What do you mean by that?”
“I was told he had relationships with a lot of different women. Intimate relationships. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“I . . . yes, I suppose it is.”
“Do you know any of his women friends?”
“Not really. I may have met one or two, but . . .”
“How about Penny Belson?”
“That bitch. Munroe should have known better.”
“You know Miss Belson, then.”
“Yes, I know her. Why? Have you been talking to her?”
“Yesterday at her salon.”
“What did she tell you?”
“About what?”
Pause. “She’s a liar, you know. And a tramp.”
Pot calling the kettle black, I thought.
“What did she say about me?” Mrs. O’Daniel asked.
“Nothing specific. I understand you used to be one of her customers. What happened?”
“I decided to go to another salon, that’s all.”
“Why? Did you have some sort of trouble with Miss Belson?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
Time to back off again. “Who else did Randall date regularly?” I asked.
“I told you, I don’t really know.”
“But you were a friend of his—”
“I didn’t pry into his personal life.”
“You saw him socially, though, didn’t you? Often?”
“Not very often, no.”
“Did you see him on the day he died?”
“Of course not.” But again she said it too quickly. “I don’t see the point of all these questions. Just what are you leading up to?”
“I’m not leading up to anything. I’m only doing my job—asking questions, looking for answers. Trying to find out if anybody has anything to hide.”
“Are you insinuating I have something to hide?”
“Do you, Mrs. O’Daniel?”
She looked a little pale now under her buttery tan. “No,” she said, “I do not,” but the lie was there in her eyes, naked and bright. She got to her feet. “I think you’d better leave now,” she said coldly. “We have nothing more to say to each other.”
“Not for the time being, anyway.”
I stood up too, and she turned immediately and led me back through the house to the front entrance. She didn’t roll her hips this time; she walked in short, choppy steps with her back stiff and straight. When she got to the door she flung it open, stepped back, and looked at me with her eyes smoldering. Scene in an old-time melodrama, I thought. I half expected her to say something like, “Go, and never darken my door again.” But all she said was,
“Well?” when I didn’t walk out right away.
“Your husband told me he was going to spend the weekend on a houseboat,” I said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me where he is.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to talk to him again.”
“About me, I suppose.”
I watched her in silence.
“Oh, all right,” she said. “He’s at Shasta Lake, at a place called Mountain Harbor.”
“Is that a town?”
“No. It’s some sort of boat harbor about fifteen miles from here. He keeps his houseboat there.”
“His houseboat?”
“I don’t like boats or water. Now will you please leave?”
I left. And she slammed the door shut behind me.
Up by the platform deck, I paused and took another look at the lemon-colored Porsche with the FAST UN license plate. One of Munroe Randall’s neighbors had told me she’d seen “a yellow sports car” parked just down the street from Randall’s house some three hours before he and his house went up in flames. It didn’t have to have been Helen O’Daniel’s Porsche,
of course. But I would have given odds and bet a bundle that it was.
Munroe Randall—and maybe Paul Robideaux, too. And no telling yet how many others, or what else she was afraid I might find out about. Helen O’Daniel got around pretty good. For a married woman.
CHAPTER TEN
Three minutes after I pulled into the Sportsman’s Rest, Martin Treacle showed up.
I was standing in front of our room, talking to Kerry, when he came wheeling in. She’d been swimming, because the skimpy little white suit she wore was still wet, but her mood wasn’t any better than when I’d left her. When I said I was going to drive up to Shasta Lake to see Frank O’Daniel again, and offered to take her along, she said no, she was going to shower and then read: she didn’t feel like sitting around and waiting while I conducted any more of my interviews.
Treacle was driving a two-year-old Lincoln Continental. And in spite of the lingering heat he was wearing another three-piece suit, this one made out of some shiny material I didn’t recognize. He was one of these people who manage to look cool and comfortable no matter what the temperature, damn him.
He came over and shook my hand in his earnest way. When I introduced him to Kerry he took her hand too, and I thought briefly that the silly bastard was going to kiss it. He let go of it instead and smiled at her in an approving way. She seemed to like that; the smile she gave him in return was warmer than any she’d let me have all day.
Treacle said to me, “I just got in from the city this afternoon. I called Miss Irwin at home and she told me you were staying here.”
“Mm.”
“How’s it going so far?”
“How’s what going so far?”
“The investigation,” he said. “I guess your findings are about what we expected?”
“Are they?” I said. “Maybe not.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand. You mean there’s some doubt in your mind about Munroe’s death?”
“Some, yes. Did Miss Irwin tell you what happened yesterday at your office?”
“Oh, that,” Treacle said. “Yes, she told me. But that couldn’t have anything to do with Munroe—”
“Coleclaw committed one act of violence; he could have committed another.”
“But you don’t have any evidence of that . . . or do you?”
“Not yet.”
“He’s just a crank, that’s all,” Treacle said. “He probably wrote that threatening letter to Frank too. It doesn’t have to mean anything ominous.”
He was annoying me again. I still hadn’t managed to work up an active dislike for him, but I was getting closer to it. It wouldn’t be long now.
I got the letter out of my wallet and shoved it under his nose. “Anything familiar about this?” I asked him. “The printing, the paper, the style of wording?”
He blinked at the note. Kerry crowded in and peered at it too. I gave her a look, but she didn’t pay any attention.
“Well?” I said to Treacle.
“No,” he said. “No, none of it is familiar. It looks like a crank note to me. Doesn’t it look that way to you, Miss Wade?”
“Yes,” she said, “it does.”
Bah, I thought. I folded the note and put it back into my wallet.
Treacle said, “Have you been to Musket Creek yet?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there.”
“What did you find out?”
“Not much from the people I talked to,” I said. “But the fire they had was arson.”
“It was?”
“Whoever did it used a candle.” I went back and opened up the trunk and showed him the cup-shaped piece of stone with the wax residue inside. “I found this among the debris,” I said.
He used one of the rags in the trunk to pick it up, and peered at it. Pretty soon he said, “Travertine.”
“Huh?”
“That’s the kind of mineral this is. Travertine—layered calcium carbonate. Geology is one of my interests.”
“An unusual stone?”
“No, not for this part of the country.” He rubbed at it with the rag, ridding it of some of the black from the fire. “It’s fossilized,” he said, and showed me the imprints in the stone. “Bryophytes.”
“What are bryophytes?” Kerry asked.
“Nonflowering plants. Mosses and liverworts.”
“Is that kind of fossil uncommon?”
“Not really. They turn up fairly often in this area.” Treacle picked at the wax residue with his fingernail. “This is purple, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “One of the women over there makes purple candles as a hobby. Ella Bloom.”
“That one,” Treacle said. “She reminds me of a witch.”
“Me too. She threatened me with a shotgun when I tried to talk to her.”
“My God. What did you do?”
“What would you do if somebody started waving a shotgun at you?”
“Why . . . I’d run, I guess.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I took the stone away from him, put it back into the trunk, and closed the lid. Kerry was fanning herself with one hand; as late in the day as it was—close to five o’clock—the heat out here was oppressive. Treacle noticed her discomfort and waved a hand toward a restaurant-and-bar that adjoined the motel.
“Why don’t we go in where it’s cool and have a drink?”
“That’s a good idea,” Kerry said. “I could use something.”
I said, “You want to go into a public place dressed like that?”
“What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”
“That bathing suit . . .”
“I also happen to be wearing a beach robe,” she said. “I’ll button it right up to my neck so I won’t offend you or anybody else.”
“I didn’t mean . . . Look, I thought you were going to take a shower and read a book.”
“I’d rather have a drink. That is, if you don’t mind.”
Well, I did mind. I wanted to ask Treacle some personal questions—questions about Munroe Randall and Helen O’Daniel—and I didn’t want to do it in front of her because it might inhibit him. But if I told her to leave us alone, I’d pay for it later: I’m not hard-boiled enough, or macho enough, despite Kerry’s accusation, to order women around and get away with it. So I sighed—I seemed to be doing a lot of sighing today—and said, “All right.” And the three of us went off together to the bar.
Inside, the air conditioner was going full-blast and it was nice and cool. We sat in a booth, away from the half-dozen other patrons, and a waitress came over to take our orders. She was Chinese, and she reminded me vaguely of Jeanne Emerson, and that in turn reminded me of the night Jeanne had come to my flat and what had happened while she was there. The memory made me feel uncomfortable; I couldn’t look at Kerry because I was afraid she’d see something in my expression. Some tough guy I was.
So instead I focused my attention on Treacle and launched into an edited version of how things had gone in Musket Creek. When I was done he shook his head in a martyred kind of way and allowed again as how everyone who lived there was a loony. But then he qualified it, for my benefit, by saying that he couldn’t believe any of them was really dangerous.
“No?” I said. “How about Jack Coleclaw?”
“Well, anyone can lose his temper, you know. And Frank . . .” He paused because the waitress had returned with our drinks—beer for Kerry and me, a Tom Collins for Treacle. I didn’t look at her while she was serving us. “Frank,” Treacle continued when she was gone, “well, he’s not the most tactful guy in the world.”
“He provokes trouble, you mean?”
“No, no. It’s just that he’s too blunt sometimes. I’ve tried to tell him you have to be careful when you’re dealing with loonies, but he forgets himself.”
I started to say something, but before I could get it out Kerry said in miffed tones, “Loonies. Why do you have to keep using that word?”
He blinked at her. “Well, I—”
“They’re not such loonies. They only want to be left alone. And they’re frustrated.” I threw her a warning look but she ignored it. “Mr. Treacle, may I ask you a frank question?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Don’t you or your partner give a damn what happens to those poor people?”
I felt like reaching across the table and strangling her a little. You don’t talk that way to people you’re trying to get information out of, people you want to cooperate. At least I don’t; if I did I would have ended up unemployed a long time ago. But she got away with it, just as she’d got away with fast-talking Hugh Penrose earlier.
“Certainly we care, Miss Wade,” Treacle said. He didn’t sound ruffled or defensive; he didn’t even sound surprised anymore. Maybe it was a question he’d heard any number of times before. “Neither of us has a heart of stone, you know. And Munroe didn’t either.”
“Then how can you just waltz into Musket Creek and take their land away from them?”
“We’re not trying to take their land away from them,” Treacle said patiently. “Why, their own parcels will be worth far more than they are now once we’ve restored the Gold Rush camp and opened it to the public.”
“You mean turned the place into some kind of tourist-trap.”
“That’s not true. Our plans call for careful, authentic restoration. We’re very much interested in improvement and preservation of historical landmarks. . . .”
They went on that way, Kerry offering challenges, Treacle using his salesman’s rhetoric to defend himself and his attitudes. She was being controlled now, though, like the leader of a debate team; so was Treacle. I nibbled at my beer and thought how nice it would be to take both of them back to the Sportsman’s Rest and throw them into the swimming pool.
What I was waiting for was Kerry to finish her beer. It didn’t take her long; she was thirsty and she got it down reasonably fast. When her glass was empty she said, “Excuse me,” more to Treacle than to me, and got out of the booth and hurried off. It never fails. The stuff goes right through her; as soon as she takes in twelve ounces, she has to go to the ladies’ room. Her plumbing is as predictable as Old Faithful.
Once she was out of earshot I said to Treacle, “I picked up a couple of rumors today. Maybe you can tell me if they’re worth anything.”
Nightshades (Nameless Detective) Page 8