The Desert Lake Mystery

by Kay Cleaver Strahan

  “‘What is all this?’ Mayor Oakman demanded.

  “‘I’m uncertain, myself,’ Twill answered. ‘But Judge Shively said it was his son when he introduced it. Clyde Shively. Arrived around noon today.

  Caught a ride out from Ferras with some tourists——’

  “‘Who couldn’t read?’ Mayor Oakman interposed. You know how tourists’ disregarding all those ‘Private Road, Keep Out’ signs of his always throws the Mayor off any subject.

  “Betty-Jean stood up. ‘If Clyde is here,’ she said, ‘I must run right over to see him. I don’t understand why Judge Shively didn’t tell me——’

  “Twill stepped in front of her and spoke straight to her as if he’d forgotten all the rest of us. ‘Betty-Jean, honor now, didn’t you know that fellow was in camp?’

  “‘No. I had no idea that he was,’ she answered. ‘I haven’t seen him for ages. I must run right over——’

  “‘Wait a minute,’ Twill said. ‘I’ve pulled a boner. Sorry. Judge Shively told me that he was saving his son to crown your feast this evening, as it were. A grand surprise for you. I didn’t believe him. I thought that you must know the son was here. I also thought—— Well, you’ll admit there were numerous things I might have thought. But, since you honestly didn’t know he was here, I suppose the surprise story was true. I’d no notion that the old gentleman was so childish.’

  “‘I don’t know that that’s so childish,’ Mayor Oakman disagreed. ‘I know of nothing that cheers up a party like a pleasant surprise.’

  “‘I’ve often suspected that I am unfortunately adult,’ Twill answered and, after glancing at his wrist watch, he made an ugly twisting gesture with his shoulder and walked fast to the front door.

  “Betty-Jean ran after him and caught him as he put his hand on the doorknob. I’d looked at my watch when he looked at his, so I know that it was twenty minutes until four right then.

  “Mayor Oakman said in a low voice, ‘That boy gets crazier by the day. Does anyone know what is the matter with him now?’

  “We knew. He was the only one too dull to know that Twill was insanely jealous of Betty-Jean, and that the idea of anyone’s thinking that another man could be a grand surprise for her was destroying him, and making him fancy all sorts of impossible things. None of us explained.

  “Twill banged the door shut. Betty-Jean came back to the bridge table. I’d seen Twill give her an angry shove and she was holding her hand over the place on her shoulder.

  “‘Sit down, daughter,’ Mayor Oakman said. ‘We’ll try a few hands together since Rosemary has gone. Brigid, will you make the fourth?’

  “‘If you’ll excuse me, please, Father,’ Betty-Jean said, ‘I think I must go to see Clyde. I mean, in case Twill wasn’t joking or mistaken or something. I mean, Judge Shively would think it was rude of me not to come.’

  “‘Use some sense, Betty-Jean,’ Mayor Oakman scolded. ‘Twill had no business to tattle and spoil the old Judge’s little plans. We must consider that Twill behaved like a gentleman and not like a lunatic. We’ll do nothing and say nothing and this evening when the son—Clyde, is it?—appears, we’ll all be enormously surprised.’

  “And,” Brigid finished, very grimly for a nice girl, “we were. Remember, Jeff? We were all enormously surprised.”

  Chapter XVI

  As I said, Mrs. Duefife, being such a good talker herself, had gone to sleep as soon as Brigid began talking. But she woke with a start, during the pause after Brigid’s grim remark and asked, “Where is Reggie?”

  “In the kitchen,” I answered absentmindedly, my mind still being on Brigid’s story, and forgetting that I’d seen him walking toward the community house quite a while ago.

  “I was telling Jeff,” Brigid said, “about Twill’s leaving the community house after the quarrel yesterday afternoon. Rosemary left a moment later. Before I went to the bridge table I looked out of the window and saw her running to catch him. She linked arms with him and they went on together toward his cottage.

  “A few minutes after that Reggie came in from the kitchen. But, in the meantime, he’d been to his cottage for the canned pineapple. It was on his way back that he saw Twill in swimming.”

  “So odd of him,” Mrs. Duefife murmured.

  “If you mean Twill,” Brigid snapped, “it wasn’t odd at all. The storm had cleared and it was hot. Swimming was the one exercise Twill had and the relaxation was splendid for him.

  “At any rate, as soon as Reggie came in, Mayor Oakman decided that we were all tired of playing bridge and should stop. But, since he couldn’t command us to do so, we were going on with Reggie and Mrs. Duefife playing together, when Mayor Oakman called Mrs. Duefife into the kitchen.”

  Brigid stopped talking on a questioning note and looked straight at Mrs. Duefife who didn’t seem to notice for a couple of minutes. Finally, though, she spoke up a little less collectedly than usual.

  “He did interrupt right then, didn’t he? It seems to me we hadn’t bid the first hand, or had we?”

  “No, we hadn’t,” Brigid said, and stopped, still questioning.

  “He didn’t want anything really important,” Mrs. Duefife said. “He had noticed that Reggie’s sinus trouble seemed a bit worse—the dampness, you know—so he suggested that I should get his nasal jelly for him. He knew Reggie would not trouble for himself.”

  I never was more embarrassed in my life. Brigid blushed until her freckles didn’t show. We both knew that whatever Adam had told Mrs. Duefife in the kitchen, it hadn’t come within shouting distance of Reggie’s nasal jelly.

  Mrs. Duefife swung off the bed and began taking hairpins out of her hair to stick them in again. “The whole thing is entirely trivial, of course,” she said, stopping at the screen door and holding it open for more flies to come in, “but, do you know, I think I shall ask you not to mention to Adam this matter of the nasal jelly. He is—could one say a bit overly sensitive?”

  She had been feeling her way through each word, but she tripped on that “sensitive” and knew it, and took it right back.

  “No. Sensitive is not the word. One avoids ‘vain.’ One rejects ‘fussy’ for a personality so richly vivid. But Twill’s calling Adam an ‘old woman’ cut very, very deeply. It was this, I firmly believe, that caused Adam, after suggesting the nasal jelly, to request particularly that the suggestion should not seem to come from him. Dear man. How he does brood over his little fuss. I mean, how he does fuss over his little brood. We should all help him, I think; smooth his path——”

  “We won’t say a word about the nasal jelly,” Brigid interrupted, sounding tired.

  “Well,” I said to Brigid who just sat there looking glum after Mrs. Duefife had finally gone, “come to think of it, who thought up the plot of fetching Reggie’s nasal jelly can’t make a lot of difference; can it?”

  “Liars make a difference,” she said.

  “Any lady,” I told her, “who can’t do better by a lie than that, is more than likely the most truthful person on the place. How long was she hobnobbing with Adam in the kitchen?”

  “Only two or three minutes; long enough for Reggie to turn on the radio. You came in just after she did. You must have noticed how nervous she was and how eager to have you play her hand?”

  “She went to get the nasal jelly,” I said.

  “She had it with her when she came back, yes. She was gone rather long. And it was after four o’clock.”

  “If ‘rather long’ is just about time enough to go to her cottage and get the nasal jelly, you’re right,” I said.

  “Do you think that Mayor Oakman sent her for the jelly?”

  “No,” I said. “I think what you think. That Adam was planning to bump off Clyde Shively, so he called Mrs. Duefife into the kitchen and told her all about it—just to be on the safe side.”

  Brigid got up and began swatting the flies.

  “Or,” I asked, “did he send her to do the killing? In some ways that would be more like him. Sa
ving himself steps, I mean.”

  “If you don’t stop trying to be funny,” she said, landing about one fly for every two words, “I’ll—I’ll——”

  “Own up that it was you who slipped Judge Shively’s glasses into Reggie’s pocket last night?” I interrupted.

  “That’s nice, too,” she said, very offhandedly.

  “You went through the Judge’s pockets last night in the clothes closet. You’ve some crazy idea that because Reggie is fat he couldn’t be guilty of crime, or even accused. I don’t know why. And I don’t know why you thought it would be a nice complicating plan to move the glasses from the Judge’s pocket to Reggie’s. But I’ll bet you know.”

  “I didn’t take one thing out of those pockets last night,” she said. “The glasses weren’t in them. I suppose you don’t believe me, and I don’t care. Why should you? Some of us must be lying. I’d probably be more deft with it than any of the others, except you and your precious Adam, of course.”

  “Look here now, Brigid,” I said. “Adam is no liar.

  He may be kind of diplomatic at times——”

  “Diplomatic! Throwing Betty-Jean at Kent’s head all summer. And it wasn’t until last evening, when Kent finally said straight out that he was going to marry Rosemary, that any of these horrors began happening.”

  “Kent told us well after seven o’clock yesterday evening. Clyde Shively was killed, the best we’ve figured yet, close after four in the afternoon. And, come to think of it, Kent wasn’t going to marry Clyde Shively.”

  “No. He was going to marry Rosemary. Mayor Oakman knew that no girl in her senses could be in love with a Twill if a Kent wanted her to love him, so all the Mayor had to do was to change Kent’s plans, not Betty-Jean’s. For that matter, I don’t see how any girl could be in love with any man but Kent. I’ve adored him madly for years. Didn’t you know? I thought I’d told everyone. That’s the reason I adore Rosemary—or one of them. What was I saying?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Oh, yes. About Mayor Oakman’s thinking that if Twill and Rosemary were out of the way all his troubles would be over. I asked Rosemary yesterday evening what he’d said to her by the gate when she came home from her ride. She told me that he’d said only that she and Twill must leave on account of Twill’s behavior. That was his plan—just to kick them out. But when Kent took a hand and spoiled that plan, Mayor Oakman might have decided that he’d have to find another one. Suppose that he could make it appear, even temporarily, that Rosemary had done some wicked thing?”

  “I’d be ashamed!” I said.

  “I’m not. When St. Dennis first met Mayor Oakman in New York he told Mother that he’d met an up-from-the-soil product of the Far West who looked like Ramsay MacDonald and thought he was the Lord Almighty. He is proud of the Ramsay resemblance, so he doesn’t tell that his father left him tons of that funny stuff he found in California in ‘49. He is a poseur; and he still thinks that he’s the Lord Almighty and meddles with people’s lives. He meant to stick a finger in this and he fell in up to his eyebrows, but——”

  It was a big relief to have Betty-Jean come in just then. She had tried to fix up a little; but she wasn’t pretty, yet, and she’d forgotten to rub any of the powder off her neck.

  “Father and the men are home,” she said. “They didn’t find anything at all in the crevice below Dead Man’s Hook.”

  Brigid gave me a look that meant “I told you so” several times, but all she said was, “Take this chair, Betty-Jean, honey. Lean back, and rest.”

  “I don’t want to rest,” Betty-Jean said, but she sat down and slumped a little. “I was going to tell you something. Oh, yes. Joe Laud telephoned a few minutes ago. He says the bullet that killed Clyde Shively was much larger than the bullets in Twill’s revolver. I mean, Twill’s in his pearl-handled revolver were smaller. Did I say larger? What I mean is that the bullet that killed Clyde was too large to fit into Twill’s little revolver. Clyde used to bring me chocolate marshmallows all the time when I was little. I choked on one once, but Clyde didn’t laugh. Another time he gave me a boy doll in a red velvet suit. It had big brown eyes, like Twill’s. If the bullet wouldn’t fit into Twill’s revolver, no one can blame Twill now, can they?”

  “Of course not.” Brigid went over to her and began petting her up. “But no one blamed Twill, anyway. Truly. Brigid wouldn’t fib to you, darling.”

  “I love you, Briggy,” Betty-Jean sighed. “But Reggie just talks and talks about Twill’s being in swimming and then people look funny. I forgot. Jeff, Father told me to ask you to come to the community house. Reggie told him that you were here. Father is very angry. I loved Judge Shively. Mother loved him, too. He used to call us his two best Bettys. It was a joke. Oh, dear, isn’t it hot?”

  Brigid came out on the stoop with me. “Betty-Jean is half out of her mind,” she whispered. “I wish I knew what to do. But, anyway, you tell Reggie that if he mentions Twill’s swimming again, ever, I’ll tell Mayor Oakman that he’s in love with Betty-Jean. I will, too.”

  “Reggie you mean? Is he?”

  “Desperately. He fell in love with the first meal she ever cooked when a tick bit Jeremiah months ago at Hay Patch.”

  “There’s something to be thankful for,” I said. “That Jeremiah isn’t here now.”

  She didn’t pay any attention. She was peering out at the lake.

  “Can you imagine,” I said, “what we’d have on our hands, and how sickening it would be if Jeremiah was here now bawling all over the camp?”

  “Who, Jeremiah?” she said, so I turned around to see what in the nation she was staring at with that creepy look on her face.

  I saw. Old Memaloose, sprawling; and sitting on it, empty, motionless, reminding a person of nothing on earth but a waiting coffin, that doggone canoe.

  “I’ll swim to it, presently,” she said, as if we’d been talking about it all the time, “and push it across to the boathouse landing.”

  Her own papa who, if not a smarter man than the average, certainly thinks that he is, said himself that if he had been in my place right then he wouldn’t have seen a mite of harm in letting the kid move the canoe since it was an eyesore to her. Yes, leaving the canoe alone might, possibly, have saved two lives. But how could I know that? I couldn’t. Nobody could have known it, then. So I stepped off the cement, in order to walk in peace and quiet on the ground, and started out to meet Adam at the community house.

  Chapter XVII

  Walking on the ground made going slower—our rocky deserts resemble in no way the seashore sand—so I had time for thinking, some, as I went along.

  The first thing I did, was to give all that alibi business up as a bad job. According to Brigid’s and Mrs. Duefife’s stories, there had been too much gadding around. It did kind of look as if Kent and I had pretty fair alibis; but, come to think of it, ours weren’t so hot, either.

  Take my own. I met Rosemary at the gate, after the storm had cleared, and got into the kitchen with Adam at about four o’clock. But I could have had a leeway in there of ten minutes or so—long enough to hurry off and kill one or two men, easy, before I started my alibi, first with Adam and then with the other folks playing bridge. (If anyone should think that my playing contract bridge needs an alibi, or something, maybe I should explain that I learned when a couple of big bugs from Denver came to spend the winter with Adam in 1927. I like it fine. Next to poker it’s the best card game I know except solo.)

  Kent’s alibi went up in smoke if, instead of walking home from Ferras and making good time in under three hours, he’d jumped a horse and ridden home. His footprints showed for walking through the gate, but he could have dismounted and walked into camp.

  What became of the horse? I’m well acquainted around here and I don’t know a single horse that wouldn’t light out for home if it had half a chance.

  Of course I knew that Kent had walked home as he said he had. And I was pretty certain that I hadn’t just finished
up a few killings when I went into the living room and took Mrs. Duefife’s place at the bridge table that afternoon.

  As soon as she came back with the nasal jelly, Reggie said that he was tired of playing and went into the kitchen; so the four of us, Mrs. Duefife and Brigid, Betty-Jean and I, settled down for a session.

  We didn’t play for big money, but enough to be interesting to lose and interesting to win. Betty-Jean was a terrible player, but as usual she held the cards to even things up. After Reggie stopped fussing around, turned off the radio and went sound asleep on the sofa we had a mighty good game and time got clear away from us.

  The first thing we knew, here Adam came in all dressed up in spanking clean white and whewing about the air being stuffy as folks always do who feel superior on account of having been outdoors when others have been indoors. He whewed so much and so loud that Reggie woke up, and Reggie wanted his dinner right off.

  “You’ll have almost an hour to wait,” Adam told him. “It is only ten minutes past seven——”

  “Ten minutes past seven!” Betty-Jean said, and went on saying she had never done such a thing before in her life, and that there wouldn’t be any dinner, and what in the world, and why hadn’t somebody told her.

  Adam tried soothing her by suggesting that she turn us out to graze, and by saying that give him a frying pan and he could fix a meal fit for a king in under twenty minutes.

  He didn’t soothe her. Everything he’d say she’d say something that didn’t answer. “I saw some fine roasted fowls, in the ice-box,” he said. “Instead of fixing them fancy, as you told me you were going to, why not slice them cold? Nothing better.”

  “Hot consommé would be horrid,” she said.

  “We’re all homefolks here,” Adam said, “and there is plenty of food on hand. A little later, or not so elaborate, what’s the difference?”

  “And that makes my salad too simple. Perhaps if I used a Roquefort dressing, and curled some cucumbers. No. And I did want everything to be so nice.”