The Desert Lake Mystery

by Kay Cleaver Strahan

  “What else was there to think? I had to believe it. I couldn’t allow my senseless intuitions to rule my reason, could I? Where was I? What was I talking about when you contradicted me?”

  “I didn’t contradict you,” I said. “I don’t know what you were talking about, but I think you were getting ready to talk about who murdered Twill, if he did kill Betty-Jean, which you are pretty certain he didn’t—but I don’t know.”

  “Very well,” he said, like something—I don’t know what—was all settled. “Do you know why none of us took any action, whatever, today when Brigid O’Dell told us of seeing a man here in camp with horses?” “No,” I said.

  “I presume,” he said, “that it was because we knew she could not have seen Clyde Shively. But, as someone suggested, she could have seen a man who resembled Clyde Shively.”

  “No,” I said. “I guess she didn’t.”

  I knew that the time had come to make a clean breast of it to Adam. I thought that I might be going to need his help for Brigid before long. But I wanted to tell him in a nice way and I couldn’t think of a nice way.

  “You mean,” he said, “that her entire story was a lie? That she saw no one here? I’ve had that feeling from the first. However, spoiled and precocious as she is, I think that she wouldn’t lie for the simple love of lying. That she would need some real or fancied necessity——”

  “Yes, you bet,” I said, jumping at the chance to agree with him. “She had a fine necessity. She saw you——”

  “Saw who?” he said.

  “You,” I said, and was going on to explain but he had stopped and had sat down on the stoop of the cottage there.

  When I sat down beside him, “I? Me?” he said, and finding that neither of them suited, he began rolling his head in his hands and sounding exactly like Rimrock. “Insane. Riding two horses and leading a hammer. No. I’m insane. She’s insane. You’re insane——”

  I couldn’t let that go on. I decided that I’d have to tell him the facts and hope against hope that he wouldn’t ask me how I’d come by them. They were correct, as it was proved afterward; but I had an evil foreboding of how he’d act if he knew that I was giving him mere deductions right then.

  “Listen here, Adam,” I said. “When Brigid got back to camp this afternoon she saw the canoe——”

  “The canoe?”

  “Yes, the canoe floating on the lake with something in it. She put on her swimming suit and swam out to it, the poor kid. It must have been a sickening shock to her, finding Twill’s body there like—well, like it was, you know. How she screwed up her pluck to push the canoe back to the boathouse landing and drag it into the boathouse as far as she could, I can’t figure. But she did. And then she phoned for me to come and bring Kent——”

  “I’ve been meaning all day to ask you,” he interrupted, “by whose orders and by what right you took Kent out of jail.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, but very weakly, I’m afraid, “if that’s the way you feel about it, to Hades with the job.”

  “Good boy, Jeff,” he said. “Go on. Go on. Can’t you stick to your subject? Brigid telephoned to you——”

  “But you got the word first. So, when she ran out to meet Kent and me she saw you coming instead. Like sixty. She thought that she daren’t tell you about finding the body. She feared you’d make trouble for Rosemary.

  “So to avoid all other trouble, and give her time to be alone with Kent and see about disposing of the body, she did the only sensible thing to do—she just up and lost consciousness until she heard that Doc Sprague was coming. Then she had to lose her memory.

  “No, but she was doing her level best,” I said, in answer to what Adam said then. I can’t be repeating all the interruptions he made while I was giving him these facts. It wouldn’t do. He didn’t mean most of them, so I’ll omit them all.

  “She is a good girl,” I said. “She was trying only to do good. I suppose you’d like it better if she tattled all the time the way Reggie does? You hate people who stick up for their friends?

  “Of course little Betty-Jean was her friend,” I said. “And when the terrible news came about her, Brigid nearly went crazy. I know because I saw her.

  “She did not,” I said, answering him again. “But one of the reasons Brigid nearly went crazy was because she did wonder, just for a minute or two in there, if Rosemary—well, had done just right about everything.

  “I know some things without being told,” I said. “And, maybe, I was wondering something the same myself. But as soon as Rosemary walked in, and we could look at her, and hear her talking, Brigid and I both knew that we had wronged her something terrible. And Brigid went back, stronger than ever because she’d been unjust to Rosemary, to trying to help her.

  “No,” I said, answering him. “The next thing was that Kent, unthinkingly of course, began questioning Rosemary out in public about her not telling that she had been for a ride that morning. Brigid took a notion—the poor little kid was so upset—that Kent was throwing off on Rosemary. Brigid has always thought a lot of Kent. So she decided that if she couldn’t count on him she couldn’t count on anybody and she made up her mind right then to go it alone.

  “She did not,” I said, again answering him. “But she may have had some childish notion that now, since things had got so terribly bad, she shouldn’t ask anybody, even me, to lend a hand—implicating themselves and all that. It would be just exactly like her.

  “That’s not true,” I interrupted. “She gave it back to you, didn’t she? I told her myself that the roll of money was on the kitchen table. She borrowed a little of it, just the same as she borrowed the drummer’s car. She had to, so that she could come over here tonight to get in touch with the Killaky boys and pay them to take the body away somewhere. She knew she’d be too noticeable driving a strange car into Nameless, so she had to run the chance of phoning them from here.

  “It was not,” I said, when he got through. “And what would she swim in but her swimming suit. She had her dress on over it, didn’t she?”

  “Leaving the matter of her costume,” he said, “which, by the way, I did not mention. Have you finished your story?”

  “No,” I said, trying to think of something else to say.

  “Exactly as I thought,” he said. “I have been patient. I have listened, quietly, to this endless rigmarole, only to find that there is and can be no explanation for that fantastic, unnecessary story that she told of seeing Clyde Shively, alive, riding here on the place, leading a horse, carrying a hammer——”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Unnecessary? You were fixing to send Rosemary to jail because she was the only person on the place who could ride the only horse on the place. One more horse was an absolute necessity. Brigid put it in, and then she put in the other horse, the man and the hammer for good measure. I guess she thought she ought to. She’s nice that way.” Adam got right up and began leaving me. There was something about his gait—kind of a cross between a dog trot and a hippety-hop—that I mistrusted. It was too spry. He was up to something, I knew; so I followed him as fast as I could.

  He stopped in front of the community house where Rosemary, Kent and Joe were still sitting in the big car, to ask where Miss MacDonald was.

  Joe said he thought she’d left camp. Kent said that she and Brigid had gone into the community house, so we went in and located them in the kitchen.

  As we had walked across the living room I’d heard Brigid saying, “Yes, I am sure, Miss MacDonald. I closed the gate when I came into camp, and I didn’t open it later. I suppose any gate might possibly swing open by itself, but there wasn’t any wind.” So it was some discouraging, when we got to the kitchen, to find both ladies talking about food again.

  Adam said, behind his hand to me, “Women! Cooking recipes!” But I guess Miss MacDonald’s hearing was sharp, too, for she spoke right up:

  “I was wondering, Mayor Oakman, why you insisted that your daughter should give such a long, elaborate dinner f
or an invalid who, as I understand it, had a train trip ahead of him?”

  “Apparently,” Adam said, “your experience with slight heat indispostions has been limited. As for the menu, I prefer simplicity in all things. I merely requested my daughter to give a small dinner in honor of our guest. Nothing had been done for him in the way of hospitality since he came to camp. Now, if I may, I should like to present to you some important evidence that has just now been brought to my attention.”

  “Yes?” Miss MacDonald said, sounding exactly as if she was hurriedly answering a noisy telephone on a busy morning.

  “I presume you have been told,” Adam said, “that a man was seen here this afternoon, riding a horse, leading another horse——”

  Brigid spoke up, not saucy, just imparting information. “I’ve told Miss MacDonald that I lied about all that,” she said.

  “I am sorry——“ Adam began; to this day I don’t know what he would have said if Miss MacDonald hadn’t interrupted.

  “That’s quite all right. Don’t apologize——”

  “I was not apologizing,” Adam said, and kind of paused to pick his words, so Miss MacDonald didn’t exactly interrupt when she asked:

  “Does the gate out there often swing open by itself?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly, if it has been carelessly closed.”

  Brigid was frowning at me and motioning toward the door with her head. She knew as well as I did that no power could get Adam away from there if he didn’t want to go. I did the best I could. I went outside and sat down on the front steps making myself a good excuse for him to come out if he wanted to. But when, he came he was tagging Miss MacDonald and Brigid.

  “Where are you going, Adam?” I said, hoping to detain him; but he didn’t answer.

  Brigid told me that they were going to Judge Shively’s cottage. I thought she was hinting for me to come with them and take care of Adam; and I might have gone, though I didn’t much want to, if the phone hadn’t begun ringing again.

  It was Shorty. Seemed the drummer hadn’t had his shirt on for quite a while, and Shorty was at his wit’s, end. He offered to let me talk to the drummer, but I didn’t wish to. I went outside again and sat down on the steps.

  In about fifteen or twenty minutes, more or less, Miss MacDonald, Brigid and Adam came along, walking rapidly. I hated stopping them to mention the drummer’s car, but Shorty had been my friend for thirty years.

  Adam said by the Eternal this drummer’s car had been haunting him like an evil echo for hours and hours and what about it anyway.

  I told him again, and as nice as I knew how, that Brigid had asked Shorty, and then borrowed the car. But no, he had to start another furor.

  Forgetting all his afternoon promises about never letting the dear little girl out of his sight again, he began by ordering Brigid to drive that car straight back to the hotel then and there. I said I wouldn’t have that. Brigid said never mind she wouldn’t think of such a thing, and offered as an excuse that she was afraid. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that, since we all knew better. But I guess she thought that one excuse was as good as another, as Joe said about his different wives.

  I offered to go with Brigid. Adam told me to stop interfering and called Joe over from the big car and ordered him to drive the drummer’s car back to Ferras and then to return at once to Memaloose with the hearse for the body.

  Joe said he couldn’t drive the drummer’s car and yawned, covering it very politely with his fingers.

  Adam said Brigid could do the driving. Joe said not with him she couldn’t, because it was against his principles; adding that every man ought to have some principles, and that he wouldn’t bring the hearse around Tumboldt at night, anyhow, even if he or others didn’t have any.

  Brigid said, “Ouch, Joe!”

  Joe said, “Pardon me.” He had stepped on Brigid’s foot while leaving.

  Miss MacDonald said that she’d be through with her work there at camp very soon and that then she’d drive the car back to the Ferras Hotel. Adam said that was nonsense. She said not at all, that she was going to spend the night in Ferras so that she could make an early start for San Francisco (she called it that because she lived there) by plane in the morning. So, if someone would direct her to Twill Young’s cottage, she would go on with her work.

  I jumped up in a hurry and offered to take her there. Adam hadn’t got much said except, “By the Eternal!” when we started out. But his voice came booming after us objecting to everything: to her spending the night in Ferras; to her going to ‘Frisco; to her accepting the job in the first place; to her leaving it now, and several other things.

  Apologizing for your friends is terrible, but finally I had to. “Mayor Oakman,” I said, “is all upset. He’s not at himself. You know—what he has been through today, and all.”

  “Surely,” she said. “I understand. But I hope he won’t be troublesome about my leaving.”

  “No, no,” I said. “Not the Mayor. As soon as he thinks it over, he’ll want you to do whatever you want to do. He’s the greatest one you ever saw,” I told her, “for wanting other people to do as they please.”

  “Really?” she said, as she unlocked Twill’s cottage with a key of her own. “Thank you,” she said next, I’m not sure what for, and then, “You needn’t wait.”

  I went back to the community house and sat down beside Adam on the steps. “I’m afraid,” I said to him, “that I’m repeating something I’m not supposed to. But I was asked, in my capacity as sheriff, to assist in getting everybody away from here without any fuss—just making it appear a matter of impulse. You see, as long as this big crowd sticks here, a certain person won’t have a chance in the world of catching the criminal.”

  “Irreproachable logic,” he said. “If we all leave Memaloose, and the criminals—this is not the work of one person, single-handed—should return for any reason, they could come and go without any fuss and impulsively, as you say.”

  I never claimed to be a good liar, but I was very humiliated at finding myself such a bad one. “I gave you credit for gumption enough to know that Mac and Ernie and I are staying here,” I said.

  “If you boys stay, I stay,” he said.

  I was all tired out. I thought that Adam and I both would be better off if we had our night’s rest. “The only thing is,” I said, “that I figured she wanted a chance to consult you alone over in the hotel where there’d be no fear of eavesdroppers. All this talk about leaving for ‘Frisco early tomorrow,” I said, “could be done to throw others off the scent.”

  After saying a few words, Adam went on, “There’s the woman of it for you! Why couldn’t she have told me this, frankly, herself? It serves me right for engaging her. I knew better. Watch me spike her guns.” (If I’d known that these were the last remarks Adam was going to make to me for months to come, I might have treasured them more; or, again, I might not have.)

  I watched the gun-spiking. It went off fine, if I do say it myself. I’ll bet you no lady was ever more surprised than Miss MacDonald was when she came back before long fearing trouble and found, instead, the folks all ready and waiting to go. Adam, Kent, Rosemary and Joe went in the big car. Brigid and Miss MacDonald followed in the drummer’s car. Mac and Ernie and I stayed at Memaloose. The boys went to a cottage, but I dozed in the community house hoping to hear from O’Dell.

  It seems funny that even being waked up out of a sound sleep would make me forget entirely that he was crazy, but it did. Curly had to read the message to me four or five times before I could believe my ears. What O’Dell, the doggone fool, had wired in answer to my desperation was as follows:

  “PLEASE TENDER SIMON LEGREE MY HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS. FONDLY YOURS, ELIZA AND THE INFANT ON THE ICE.”

  Chapter XXXV

  Joe brought the hearse over again about eight o’clock the following morning. He said that Kent had come with him to take Acrasia to Hay Patch, but had ridden her right off without waiting to say so much as “Good mornin
g” to the boys and me. Joe said, too, that Miss MacDonald, Brigid and Adam had stayed in Ferras all night and that Adam and Miss MacDonald had left at six a.m. that morning by airplane for parts unknown. I guess nobody could blame me for thinking that Joe had everything all wrong as usual.

  The boys and I let Joe and his hearse get a good long head start and then we left. Joe had brought over a new padlock for the gate; so Mac locked it when we had driven out and said, when he got in my car again:

  “After death the doctor,” adding, “What I’d like to know is why in blue blazes that gate wasn’t kept locked all the time.”

  “Being so well up on your adages,” I told him, “you should remember the one about no use in locking the barn door after the horse has fled. That’s what we all thought until yesterday evening.”

  “Not me,” Mac said. “I didn’t think the horse had fled. I thought he was shot. I thought sure this Twill guy had bumped off both the Shivelys and that the pretty girl had killed him by accident like she told us.”

  Ernie spoke. “Sure,” he said. “That’s what I think yet. I mean, part of it is what I think yet.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t,” Mac argued.

  “I ain’t so sure she shot that dog,” Ernie said.

  “Who do you think did shoot it, then?” Mac asked. “It was shot all right. I saw it myself.”

  “I don’t know who shot it”—Ernie gave me kind of a sidewise glance—“but Oakman—well, he found it. Seemed that there was something about Oakman’s stepping into his own footprints, or somebody else’s out by the gate that night. I don’t know.”

  “But the pretty girl confessed right out to shooting the dog,” Mac said.

  “I know,” Ernie said. “She confessed to shooting her brother, too. Oakman’s got a good-sized foot on him. But, speaking of confessing. Some women are great hands for it. My wife, Ellie, is. She’ll confess to everything the kids do, from taking money out of my pants pockets to heaving rocks through the neighbors’ windows.”