She had begun by apologizing profusely for intruding on Doris’s grief and then crying for a few moments while Doris assured her that the intrusion was not at all out of line.
“If I’d had my wits about me this morning, I would have found these papers when you were at the office,” she said finally, looking at Uncle Chuck, “and then it wouldn’t have been necessary for me to come up here now. I could have handed them over right there.”
“The police wouldn’t have liked it,” Uncle Chuck reminded her. “I guess they’re going to have to be told now just where and how you recovered them.” She reacted with a gesture of nervous worry, almost dropping the big folder, and he added, “But first let’s see what you have. Then we can decide what to do.”
She leaned forward, holding out the big folder. Uncle Chuck propped it across his knees and studied it curiously. “Is this something Sargent used all the time?”
“Well … uh … no. I had a half-dozen or so of these big folders that I brought with me when I came to work at Mr. Chenoweth’s office. I’d had them then for quite a while. Of course they were … around, and of course he was welcome to use one if he wanted to.”
Uncle Chuck untied the string and opened the folder. As he removed each document, he studied it briefly and then put it on a small table where Doris could reach it. As soon as she had glanced at the first two papers, Doris said, “These are our insurance policies.”
Uncle Chuck nodded. “This must be the mortgage insurance you mentioned, that on Sargent’s death the house would be paid for in full.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Here’s your marriage license. Or a copy.”
He had unfolded the heavy sheet, embossed with the gold seal of the county, the bottom of the page thick with various signatures. Doris was shaking her head wearily. “I had no idea Sarge had that. I supposed it was stuck away with some of my old papers.”
Uncle Chuck had taken an unsealed blank envelope from the folder and was now removing the single sheet within it. One glance, and he tried to return it unobtrusively to the folder.
“What’s that?” Doris asked sharply.
Uncle Chuck threw a momentary swift glance at Mrs. Baxter, but the older woman was not looking at him or at Doris. Her attention seemed fixed on the passageway that led out of the room in the direction of the kitchen and service area. She had one hand inside her purse, as if her original intention had been perhaps to find a cigarette and then she had been distracted.
Doris was frowning at Uncle Chuck’s hesitation. She put out a hand. “Give me the envelope.”
There was nothing to do but to hand it over. Doris removed the single photostatted sheet from within and looked at it for a moment, her eyes narrowing with anguish. “Why … why should Sarge have had Kat Knowles’s birth certificate? Why … why?”
“Dorrie, let’s don’t go into it now. I can think of several possible reasons. We can discuss them later.”
She tossed the photostat toward the small table, jerking her hand back. The white sheet drifted to the floor. “No, I won’t wait. And I can’t think of any reasons Sarge should have had it. You tell me.” Her wild eyes seemed filled with a mixture of fury and dread.
Uncle Chuck began reluctantly, “Well, let’s suppose one part of Sarge’s plan involved going out of the country with Miss Knowles. Not to Brazil—that would involve a passport. But say as far as Mexico or Canada. To cross the border freely she’d need proof of age and of United States citizenship. This birth certificate is all she’d need.”
Doris held her head between her hands as if literally to squeeze in the flying, incredible images. “This is insane. Canada or Mexico! And just this morning you and the lieutenant were talking about Sarge being ready to leave for South America. Brazil. With a passport …”
“Maybe the passport, the travel folders about Brazil were a cover-up on Sargent’s part, something to throw off anyone who might be getting nosy. They were, after all, in the top drawer of his unlocked desk.” He looked at Mrs. Baxter, but she seemed not to be paying any heed to him and Doris. She was still fixedly watching the depths of the hall.
In order to retrieve the fallen photostat, which had sailed out into the middle of the floor, Uncle Chuck got out of his chair, working quickly with the cane, and started toward it, and at the same moment Doris realized what he meant to do and she, too, jumped from her chair.
She caught up the stiff white sheet and wadded it fiercely between her palms.
“Doris, that piece of paper is evidence. It has to go to Martin.”
“I don’t care! It’s as if everything is falling down on me … I can’t endure any more.” She let the paper fall to the floor again, went back to her chair, laid her head on the padded arm, and wept into her hands.
The room was filled with the last of the sunset glow, and enough of the light reflected into the passageway to show him the big dog, crouched there, facing them, his eyes gleaming and ears flattened. “Pete!” Uncle Chuck called sharply. He stooped awkwardly and picked up the fallen paper. Still Mrs. Baxter didn’t look around; she went on staring at the dog. And Pete didn’t move, didn’t respond to Uncle Chuck’s voice.
“Come on, Pete. What the devil’s got into you?”
The dog moved forward a little, writhing on his belly.
Now Mrs. Baxter’s fixed attention suddenly broke off. She glanced up at Uncle Chuck. “Isn’t he a big, magnificent animal?” she said softly. “I had no idea … Mr. Chenoweth never spoke of him. And yet he knew I loved dogs.”
“Pete had a bad experience last night,” Uncle Chuck said, “and he’s been acting peculiarly with anyone who comes to the house.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Mrs. Baxter replied. She withdrew her hand from her purse beside her, taking out cigarettes and a pack of matches. She threw a quick, commiserating glance at Doris, evidently decided not to offer Doris the pack, and then held them out to Uncle Chuck.
“Thanks. Not right now,” he said. He went back to his own chair and smoothed the paper as best he could on his knee, then put it with the insurance forms. “Let’s see what else we have now.” He took from the folder a somewhat fatter envelope bearing Sargent Chenoweth’s name typed on its front. The flap was stuck with transparent tape, which Uncle Chuck pried loose. Inside was money—twenty one-hundred-dollar bills. “Two thousand in cash,” Uncle Chuck said aloud. Doris lifted her head to look at the money. Mrs. Baxter seemed embarrassed. Uncle Chuck asked her, “Did you look through all of this stuff?”
“No, not completely,” she said. “I saw that the insurance policies were personal ones, that they had nothing to do with the business, and I guessed from that that the contents should just be turned over to Mrs. Chenoweth.”
“You’d never had a similar experience during the year or so you’d been there?”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“Ever run into personal papers of Sargent’s?”
“Kept in the business files?” She seemed mystified by his questions. “Oh, never. Certainly not.”
“What gave you the idea of looking for personal papers today?”
She frowned at him. “Why, the things you said this morning, about some private papers being gone from a lockbox he kept at home. That’s all. I’m not gifted with second sight or anything like that. Of course, the police had gone through the files earlier today, but it seemed a very offhand business and as if they really didn’t know what they were looking for.” She put the cigarettes into the handbag and snapped the catch, the small sharp sound being answered by a whine and a sudden coughing bark from Pete, in the hall. “Now, Mr. Sadler, I’ll remind you—I considered that I was doing your niece a favor, bringing these things. I’ll admit I can’t help being a little curious why Mr. Chenoweth hid them in the ordinary office files. But it isn’t really my business.”
She stood up and shook the coat to loosen it and tucked the purse under her arm.
Uncle Chuck also made haste to rise. “I’m very grat
eful to you, Mrs. Baxter. And I know Doris is too. You must understand how some of these things have upset her.”
Sharon Baxter’s glance dwelt on Doris’s bent head with a look that approached brokenhearted gloom. “Yes. Yes, I do understand.”
He ushered her toward the front entry. At the door she turned to offer her hand. “If there’s anything I can do … any questions you need to ask—”
“I’d like to talk to you again, maybe tomorrow, about Sargent’s manner and actions during the last few weeks. You’ll have time to think things over, and I’ll have had a night’s sleep—”
The sound of an approaching car caused them both to turn to the open door and the view of the outer patio and driveway. A big gray sedan hung for a moment at the lip of the road, then crept down slowly toward the space before the garage. “I hope he doesn’t block the way out,” Sharon Baxter murmured, and then added in a tone of surprise, “Oh, it’s Mr. Knowles.”
Chapter 11
A man got out of the gray sedan on the side opposite, slamming the door shut. From what Uncle Chuck could make of him in the gathering twilight, he seemed tall and heavy and somewhat stooped. For a moment he stood there on the far side of the driveway, silent, as if looking down into the thick growth of pines. Then he came around the car, staggering a little as he tried to avoid the front bumper. He glanced up at last and must have seen them watching him.
Sharon Baxter moistened her lips with her tongue. “Oh, Mr. Knowles,” she called anxiously, “I guess you’ve heard about Mr. Chenoweth’s murder!”
The man turned his gaze on her from under heavy brows. It was hard to read his expression at this distance and in the near-dark, but Uncle Chuck sensed a deep anger, a frozen rage, in the other man. Knowles made no reply; after a moment’s hesitation he continued toward them.
Uncle Chuck stepped into the house and touched the light switch, and two big globes illuminated the patio and the lower part of the drive. The man blinked in the sudden glare. He looked unshaven; his clothes seemed disarrayed, and as he got close Uncle Chuck’s nose was assailed by odors of sweat and tobacco, overlaid with liquor. Silver shone thickly in Knowles’s hair. “Who are you?” he demanded of Uncle Chuck.
“Chuck Sadler. Mrs. Chenoweth’s uncle, and also acting as her attorney.”
Knowles tightened his mouth. He made no move to hold out his hand.
“You remember me,” Sharon said, starting to put out her hand and then jerking it back.
“Sure. How’re you?” he said without glancing at her. To Uncle Chuck he said, “I want to see Doris right away.”
“Doris has had all she can take for one day. You’ll have to talk to me. And if this has to do with your daughter and Sargent, which I judge it must have, you’ll see Doris when I decide she’s ready for it.”
Knowles lowered his head and hunched his shoulders. “You’re going to keep me out of the house?”
“I damned well am,” Uncle Chuck answered. “Even if I have to call on the cops to help me.”
Knowles shook a fist under Uncle Chuck’s nose. “You listen to me—”
“Mr. Knowles, get hold of yourself!” Sharon cried, shocked. “Mr. Sadler is … uh … handicapped. You can’t threaten to strike him!”
Knowles’s lips drew back, exposing his teeth. “The hell I can’t hit him. I’m going to see Doris. Now. I’m going to find out where Kat is. She must know … must have some idea. Sarge must have left a note for her the way Kat did for me.” He broke off to stand weaving, his eyes squeezed shut as if to crowd away an unutterable tiredness. He rubbed a big hand down his face. “God. What a night and a day I’ve had.”
There was a moment of complete silence. The sound of the wind in the pines only increased the stillness between them, there on the patio.
Sharon gave Uncle Chuck a stunned glance. “I’d better go.” Her face seemed suddenly more lined, grayish, under the lights. “Call me tomorrow, will you please? And if there’s anything I can do, anything at all …” She stepped past Knowles and hurried to her car. There was the slam of the car door and a moment later the motor hummed. The headlights sprang to life and backed up the drive toward the road.
Knowles had ignored the woman. “What about it, Chump, or whatever your name is? Am I going in to see Doris?”
Uncle Chuck’s voice had lost its defiance. He spoke gently to Knowles. “You don’t know where your daughter is?”
“I’ll find her. I know my Kat. Hiding out. Scared. An old trick of hers. Did it from the time she was little—”
“You have heard, though, that Sargent is dead?”
“Heard it on the radio. I was on my way back from International Airport in L.A. Went up there thinking I might catch Sarge and Kat.” He turned doggedly toward the open door of the house.
“Come inside,” Uncle Chuck invited, “and we’ll talk. First, though, let me get Dorrie out of the way. She has nothing to do with this.”
“Nothing to do … with Kat? But dammit, Sarge and Kat—”
“Wait here a minute.”
Uncle Chuck went into the house, hurrying as fast as his use of the cane allowed, and then saw that he needn’t have worried. Doris was in her room, lying down, flattened into the surface of the bed as if crushed there by the weight of grief and fear she had endured this day.
Uncle Chuck turned on lights in the entry and living room, then returned for Knowles. Knowles followed him with an air of suspicion, looking around the living room as if expecting Doris to be there. Then he looked at Uncle Chuck and shrugged. “Okay, we talk. You wouldn’t have a drink handy, would you?”
To Uncle Chuck it seemed obvious that Knowles had been drinking most of the day. He was almost out on his feet from tiredness and liquor. Well, one more slug wouldn’t kill him, but it had better be a light one. “Sure. Have a chair. I’ll be right back.”
He couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes, but when he returned with the drink for Knowles, the man had slumped deeply into a big chair with his head back against the cushion and looked asleep. Uncle Chuck touched Knowles’s outstretched hand with the bottom of the cold glass, and Knowles’s eyes flew open. “What? What is it?”
“Your drink.” Uncle Chuck handed him the glass, then went to sit nearby. “You said your daughter must be hiding. Is that what she would do, knowing Sargent had been killed?”
Knowles stared at him suspiciously over the glass. “What are you getting at?”
“Just wondering what your theory of it was.”
“No theory. None at all. Been driving, looking for her, all day. I’m so beat I can hardly think.” He lifted the glass to his lips.
“When did you find your daughter’s note?”
“What’re all the questions about, Chump, or whatever—”
“Chuck. Chuck Sadler.”
Knowles was silent for a moment, looking down into the drink. “Okay. Chuck, then. I got Kat’s note early in the evening. She and Sarge were in love, they were taking off into the wild blue yonder, don’t try to find her; Sarge would get a divorce wherever they were going and they’d get married and live happily ever after.”
“This mention of Sargent—it surprised you?”
Knowles hesitated over his answer. “No. Not really. Look, if you want me to go on talking to you and not go looking for Doris, you’ve got to sweeten this drink. This is water.”
“All right.” Uncle Chuck went to the kitchen, brought back the bottle, set it beside Knowles on a small table. Better a few kernels of information than resentment and perhaps lies.
Knowles sweetened the drink to an extent that raised Uncle Chuck’s eyebrows. Finally he said harshly, “I had an idea—oh, months ago—that Kat was seeing somebody on the sly, somebody she knew I wouldn’t approve of. Just lately I’d begun to think about Sargent.”
“You’d uncovered some clue to his identity?”
“No. Just a hunch.”
The room was silent for a few moments while Knowles worked on the liquor.
<
br /> It didn’t seem to be affecting him adversely. He looked over at Uncle Chuck with a suddenly alert, wide-awake expression. “What I’ve got to say to Doris isn’t just about Kat. I’m going to promise her something. I’m going to explain what I saw here last night … and that I’m not going to tell it to anybody. Of course Wiegand might spill his guts—”
“What about?”
“How do I know I can trust you? Where the hell’s Doris, anyway?” Knowles half rose, the drink in his hand.
“Sit down,” Uncle Chuck commanded. “I want to know what you saw and why you were here last night.”
Knowles sank down slowly, staring across at Uncle Chuck. “I was here because I’d found Kat’s note on my dresser when I went home … and this was the first place that occurred to me. I came up here hoping to catch Sargent before he had time to skip, the lousy sneak. I was going to half kill him if I caught him.” In a dry, emphatic tone Knowles added: “You’ll notice I said half kill.”
“You saw Sargent here?”
“No. I prowled around. Wiegand’s car was in the driveway; Doris’s was in the garage. I went down the hill there, staying close to the trees, until I could see into the living room. The draperies had been pulled, but they weren’t entirely closed. I could see what was going on. An argument.”
“An argument between Wiegand and Doris?”
“Sure. Old Wally was red in the face, yapping a mile a minute, the way he does when he gets excited. And Doris was holding one of the tools from the fireplace.” Knowles nodded toward the hearth on the other side of the room. “The poker, I guess it was. She was waving it around as if she was ready to brain somebody with it. Not Wally, though. It was as if she was telling him what she was going to do to somebody else, and he was trying to argue her out of it.”
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