Nightshades (Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  But Treacle didn’t give her a chance to answer; he said, still nattering, “We went to your motel after the sheriff—the sheriffs man called. I wanted to talk to you first, before I see him.”

  “who?”

  “You were there last night, you almost got killed yourself. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  “That’s what everybody wants to know. The exact cause of the explosion hasn’t been determined yet.”

  “But it must have been an accident,” Miss Irwin said. “Fuel leaked into the bilges and some kind of spark set it off—that’s what the radio said. Poor Frank must have forgotten to use the blowers.”

  “Maybe.”

  “There is some doubt, then?”

  “A reasonable amount.”

  “Did someone see something, is that it?”

  “No. It’s nothing specific.”

  Treacle said, “It’s murder, all right. Somebody killed Frank—killed Munroe, too, we were wrong about that. And now I’m—now I’m next in line.”

  He’d changed his tune completely. Neither Northern Development nor all that insurance money—at least $200,000 now—appeared to matter much to him anymore; what he was worried about at the moment was his own hide. Or so it seemed. The fear looked genuine enough, but you can’t be sure about things like that. It could all be an act, a smokescreen, designed to divert suspicion from himself.

  “They want me dead,” he was saying now, “all those people in Musket Creek. Coleclaw, that son of a bitch, there’s one for sure.” He leaned my way and poked me in the chest with a forefinger. “You were talking to him when we drove in. What were you talking about?”

  I resisted an impulse to slap his hand away. Whether he was putting on an act or not, I had finally reached the point where I could dislike him. Actively, if not with any particular malice. I said, “Nothing that concerns you, Mr. Treacle.”

  “Why is he here? He didn’t come—come to turn himself in, did he?”

  “No. He’s here because of the fight he had with O’Daniel on Friday evening. He knows it makes him look bad—”

  “You’re goddamn—damn right it does.”

  “But he says he has an alibi for last night. And an alibi for the night of Munroe Randall’s death. If those alibis stand up he’s in the clear.”

  “All right, so maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it wasn’t. But somebody out there is a mur—a murderer. And you better find out who he is. You or Telford or some—somebody. ”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  “I’m going to demand police protection,” he said. “I’m going to tell—tell Telf—tell Tel—shit! Look at me, I’m a nervous—nervous wreck, I can’t even talk straight.”

  Miss Irwin took his arm. “We’d better go inside,” she said. He started to resist, but she held on and said in one of those calm, stern voices mothers use on their troublesome kids, “This isn’t doing any of us any good. Come on, now.”

  “All right,” he said, “all right.” He let her lead him away about three paces, but then he twisted his head around and said to me, “You just find out who kill—who killed Frank and Munroe, that’s all. You just find out.”

  “Sure,” I said to shut him up, “I’ll find out.”

  They moved off. Kerry stayed where she was, and when they were out of earshot she said, “I hope Ms. Irwin’s got enough sense to do the driving when they leave. God, he drove like a maniac on the way over here from the motel.”

  “Is that why you were so pale when you got out?”

  “You’d have been pale too. He almost hit a bus, two pedestrians, and a motorcycle. I thought I was going to wet my pants.”

  “What’s she doing with him anyway? It’s Sunday.”

  “She lives near him; he stopped and picked her up on the way in. For moral support, I guess.”

  “Why did you come along?”

  “I was bored. And you said you’d be here.” She pulled a rueful face. “But if I’d known he was going to drive like that I’d have walked.”

  “You must have seen how upset he is. You could have figured it out from that.”

  “We can’t all have great deductive minds like yours, you know,” she said. “Not that I’m incapable of a deduction or two myself. I’d make a pretty good detective if I set my mind to it.”

  “Sure you would.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I just said you would. How about if we get out of this heat? My face hurts a little.”

  “Poor baby. Maybe you should put some more salve on it.”

  “Good idea.”

  We went over to my car and got in. Kerry said, “Where to now? Back to the motel?”

  “Yup. For the salve, plus I’ve got to call Barney Rivera.”

  “And then?”

  “Out to Mountain Harbor to return the clothes I borrowed from Tom Decker last night.”

  “I’d like to see that place,” she said. “I’ll keep you company.”

  I didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t, so I said, “All right,” and started the car.

  Barney was home, probably shacked up with a blonde from his office for the weekend; his voice had that satisfied, well-fed tone when he first came on the line. But it didn’t last long. He made a wounded noise when I told him about Frank O’Daniel’s death and started grumbling at me, as if the whole thing was my fault and I was head of a conspiracy to make his life difficult.

  I let him get away with that for a time; then I said, “Listen, Barney, there’s a hell of a lot more going on up here than you led me to believe. I can’t help it if things keep happening.”

  “Is there any chance it’s murder? Hell, it must be murder. I don’t buy that kind of coincidence.”

  “Neither do I. But there’s no evidence so far.”

  “The directors are going to scream if we have to pay off twice on that goddamn double indemnity clause. What about the surviving partner? Treacle? If he killed them for the money we won’t have to pay him a dime.”

  “If he killed them. And if it can be proved.”

  “Concentrate on him,” Barney said. “Come down hard on him if you have to. Let’s get this thing resolved fast.”

  “Screw you, Barney,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll call you again when I’ve got something to report,” and I hung up on him just as he began to squawk.

  On the way up Highway 5, Kerry and I talked about the two apparently unrelated and accidental deaths; the people who might be involved if the deaths turned out not to be accidental after all. She seemed fascinated, as she often was by my investigations, and her questions and comments were sharp. A very intelligent lady, my lady, even if she did drive me nuts sometimes.

  There were more than a few cars on the switchbacked road leading down to Mountain Harbor, and a hell of a lot of people milling around along the lakefront when we got there. Curiosity seekers, drawn by the news of tragedy and sudden death; vultures hunting for scraps of the lurid and the sensational to help sustain their meager lives. What they were feeding on at the moment was the activity of half a dozen men, a couple of them sheriff’s deputies, who were winching the fire-gutted wreckage of the Kokanee out of the lake.

  Thunder grumbled overhead as Kerry and I made our way to the café-and-store; black and bloated clouds moved restlessly above the high rock walls protecting the harbor. The sound of the winch made a whining, ratchey counterpoint to the thunder, and the two sounds together put little cold skitterings on my back. The water had a dull black shine and looked too-still—like something waiting. I had a clear mental image of the way it had been last night, out there in that black water, swimming through the debris with O’Daniel’s blown-off arm touching my face. And I shivered a little and looked away.

  Tom Decker and his wife were both inside the store; I’d expected to find them either there or in their own cabin—somewhere away from that eager crowd outside. I introduced Kerry to them, and returned the bundle of borrowed clothing.


  Decker said, “I’ve been giving some thought to what we talked about last night—you know, the possibility that O’Daniel’s boat was deliberately blown up. I still can’t figure a way it could’ve been done, not unless he arranged it himself to commit suicide.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely,” I said. “It has to be either an accident or murder.”

  “Which way are you leaning?”

  “Away from accident. But that’s not based on anything substantial yet.”

  “Well, if you’re right,” he said, “it has to have been some sort of rigged-up device, something that would cause the explosion without the killer being on board and without leaving any traces. If somebody else thought of it, one of us ought to be able to think of it too, sooner or later.”

  When we went outside again the sheriff’s men had the Kokanee winched clear and were getting ready to load it onto a long boat trailer. I drove us away from there without wasting any time. I did not want to look at that dripping, burned-out hulk; I wanted to forget it and last night as quickly as possible, bury them in that shallow mental grave I reserved for the horrors and near-horrors that touched my life.

  The first drops of rain began to splatter against the windshield just after we turned onto Highway 5. Within minutes, it was coming down in sheets and the gusty wind that had sprung up with it was strong enough to wobble the car. Lightning slashed and flickered in the vicinity of Mt. Shasta. Thunder kept rumbling, very close, very loud. The day turned so dark it was almost like dusk, and what light remained was a wet, eerie gray, tinged with yellow every now and then from the lightning flashes.

  Neither of us said much until we crossed the bridge over Turntable Bay. Then Kerry asked, “Where are we going now?” She sounded a little subdued; I thought it was probably the weather. It made me feel a little subdued myself.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” I said. “You’re going back to the motel; I’m going to Musket Creek.”

  “Oh? And why don’t I get to go there too?”

  “Because I’m going to see Paul Robideaux and it might not be a pleasant discussion. Besides which, you coming along yesterday didn’t work out too well.”

  “Meaning I got in your way, I suppose.”

  “Meaning it might not be safe for you out there.”

  “Oh, crap,” she said. “You still won’t admit you handled things badly yesterday, will you?”

  “All right, I’ll admit it. But that was yesterday; this is today. And another man died in between. I’m going alone—that’s all there is to it.”

  I expected her to give me more argument, the you’re-a-macho-jerk routine again, but she didn’t. “Do what you have to,” she said, and scrunched down on the seat, and sat staring out at the rain. She didn’t have anything else to say on the ride to Sportsman’s Rest, and nothing to say once we got there; she just opened the door and got out of the car and ran for the room.

  Another fun evening ahead, I thought gloomily as I U-turned out of the motel lot. Some job. Some vacation. Some soul mate.

  It was enough to make you consider misogyny as an alternative lifestyle.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There was rain at Musket Creek too, but it wasn’t as heavy, and little jigsaw patterns of blue were visible here and there among the clouds. The lightning and all but dim echoes of the thunder had stayed over near Redding. In the dreary light, the little valley and its collection of relics and anomalies had a desolate, forgotten look, like a vision of something out of the past—something small and insignificant, something doomed.

  The road was muddy from the rain; I had had to drive at twenty all the way in from Highway 299, and had to crawl at an even slower pace down the steep hillside into town. Lights burned in Coleclaw’s mercantile, in Ella Bloom’s cottage up on the hillock—pale blobs against the wet gray afternoon—but nobody was out and around that I could see. I drove in among the ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch. My imagination made them into crouching things, battered and weary old shades with blind eyes and signboards for mouths, waiting for night to fall. The things they’d seen, the things they knew . . . just the thought of it put a small, cold ruffling on the back of my scalp, as if somebody had blown his breath across it.

  I saw no one among the buildings either, and no one on the way up the far slope and into the woods. The shadows were thick here; it might have been twilight. The rain made hollow dripping noises in the trees, glistened and writhed like silverfish in my headlight beams.

  Paul Robideaux’s cabin was just that—a country cabin made out of notched logs, with a peaked roof to keep the snow from piling up during the winter. Both front windows showed light. Down in front, just off the road, was the jeep Robideaux had been driving yesterday. It was alone there, until I put my car alongside it and gave it some company.

  Robideaux must have heard the sound of my car’s engine; the front door opened just as I reached the porch and he stood there glowering at me. The glower faded somewhat when he got a good look at my face, but he pumped it up again after a couple of seconds and said, “What the hell are you doing here?” in the same belligerent tone he’d used on our first meeting.

  “I’ve got some questions to ask you, Mr. Robideaux.”

  “You tried that yesterday,” he said. “It didn’t work then; it’s not going to work now. Beat it. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Maybe you’ll have something to say to the county sheriffs investigators, then.”

  “What?”

  “They’ll be along pretty soon. And they won’t be as easy to deal with as I am.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No? I’m talking about Frank O’Daniel.”

  “That bastard. What about him?”

  “He’s dead. Or didn’t you know?”

  It seemed he hadn’t known. Either that, or he was putting on a good act. He said, “Dead? What do you mean, dead?”

  “It’s been on the radio.”

  “I don’t listen to the radio. O’Daniel . . . what happened to him? How did he die?”

  “His houseboat blew up last night at Shasta Lake. I was there; I almost got blown up myself.”

  “Jesus,” Robideaux said. The belligerence was gone now; he looked shaken, a little pale around the gills.

  “It might have been an accident,” I said, “just like Munroe Randall’s death might have been an accident. I’m betting neither one was, though. I’m betting they were both murdered.”

  He shook his head, as if he were only half listening to me; the other half of his mind seemed to be on something else. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “I was here last night.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. Alone.”

  “No visitors?”

  “Listen, you,” he said, “I’m not doing any more talking. Not to you, not to anybody until I see my lawyer.” He started to back up, to close the door.

  I said, “Have it your way. I’ll go get the truth out of Mrs. O’Daniel.”

  He stopped backing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “You tell me, smart-ass.”

  “I’ve seen that painting of yours she’d got hanging over her fireplace,” I said. “And I know about the two of you. Now you and I can talk it over, or I can go to her. Either way. And watch what you call me from now on. I’ve had all the crap I’m going to take off you or anybody else.”

  Part of it was a shot in the dark; if there was nothing between him and Helen O’Daniel, all he had to do was slam the door in my face. But he didn’t do that. He just stood there looking at me. No glower now; his long, thin face was still pale, and if anything he looked worried and maybe a little scared.

  Ten seconds went by while we matched stares. It was no contest, though: He let his breath out in a wobbly sigh and said, “Okay. We’ll talk.”

  “Inside, huh? It’s wet out here.”

  He backed up again, into the room this tim
e, and let me come in and shut the door. The place was as much an artist’s studio as it was living quarters; most of the rear wall was glass, a skylight had been cut into the roof back there, and that part of the room was cluttered with easels, canvases, a table full of bottles and tubes and brushes, a paint-stained drop cloth on the floor. The walls were covered with finished oils, and more were propped up along the baseboard—fifty or sixty altogether, at a quick guess. Not all of them were as awful as the one over Helen O’Daniel’s fireplace, but they were all in the same vomit-stirred-on-canvas class and all done in odd pastels and off-colors. The effect was almost hallucinatory, like a bad trip on some drug or other. A claustrophobe trapped in here would have gone bonkers inside of ten minutes.

  Robideaux had entered a little kitchen alcove and was rummaging in a cupboard. He came out with a bottle of bourbon, poured himself about three fingers, downed them in one swallow. Then he shuddered and walked back to where I was. There was color in his cheeks now, the same shade as his fiery hair; he seemed to have himself under a kind of rigid control.

  He said, “How did you find out about Helen and me?”

  “I’m a detective, remember?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “No?”

  “No. They were going to get a divorce.”

  “Were they? That’s news to me.”

  “It’s the truth. So you see? Neither of us had any reason to kill O’Daniel.”

  “Sure. Except that now she gets all their assets, not just half of them.”

  “I don’t like the way your dirty little mind works,” he said.

  “I could say the same thing about yours, if you want to play it that way.”

  We glared at each other some more. It was no contest this time, either; he turned abruptly and went to an easy chair covered in brown cloth and folded his big frame into it stiffly. He sat there not looking at me.

  I moved over near him, but I stayed on my feet. “How long have you and Mrs. O’Daniel been seeing each other?”

  “Don’t you know? I thought you knew everything.”

  “Some things, not all. That’s why I’m here.”