A Purple Place For Dying

by John D. MacDonald

  "Where was this kit kept?"

  "In the bathroom medicine cabinet."

  "He took his other toilet articles from there?"

  "Yes. I... I see what you mean. It is... very strange. It makes me feel... scared." She frowned up at me. "You said it was supposed to look as if they'd gone away together. Why?"

  "I don't know why." I saw her sudden change of expression. "What's wrong?"

  "I don't know. I suddenly remembered something. Something he said last Sunday. We were having... one of those quarrels that didn't accomplish anything. I said some kind of snotty things about his having a big week coming up, with Monday Tuesday and Thursday free for her. He said he would not see her Tuesday, yesterday. He said she would be busy. If he was planning to leave Monday..."

  "He knew she would be busy with me."

  "Then where did he go?"

  "Where was he taken?"

  "Please. Are you trying to make me more frightened?"

  "What is your name?"

  "Isobel. Isobel Webb."

  I hooked a stool over with my foot and sat on it, close and facing her. "My name is Travis McGee, Isobel."

  I took her hand. After two yanks she stopped trying to pull it away, and sat uncomfortably rigid, looking past me rather than at me.

  "Why are you acting so strangely?" she asked, wetting her mouth with a quick and pointed tongue-tip.

  "I don't want to scare you. I'm going to take a chance on telling you something. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe you'll fly apart. I don't want you to. I want you to hold on tight and ride with it. Will you try? Good. Now listen carefully. Mona Yeoman took me to an isolated cabin in the hills. At two twenty-five yesterday afternoon, standing just as close to me as you are right now, she was shot in the back and killed instantly with a high-powered rifle fired at long range. I walked out. When I came back with the Sheriff, her body was gone. All trace of her was gone. They will not believe me. They think I was trying to put up a smoke screen so she could make an easier getaway with your brother."

  She searched my face. Her eyelashes were uncommonly long. "But... they got on an airplane yesterday. At one fifteen. They went to..."

  "A big blonde woman and a very tall thin man, both in dark glasses, got on an airplane yesterday at one fifteen. I know damned well that Mona Yeoman was not on that airplane. At one fifteen she and I were in her little car heading for that cabin. We were practically there. The manifest gave the names as Mr. and Mrs. Webber Johnson. John Webb. It was like wearing a sandwich sign. If he was trying to escape notice, would he have picked a name like that? Was he that stupid?"

  "No. You... you use the past tense."

  "Was he planning to meet her Monday afternoon?"

  "N-No. He had too much work piled up. He was going to come back here and work. He had papers to grade. They were on that table when I got back here. I've turned all the class materials over to the department. Other men are taking over his courses, until they can find someone."

  I was watching her closely. She seemed very jumpy, but she seemed to be holding, on pretty well.

  "I know Mona is dead, Isobel. And there seems to be a lot of organization behind this. Substitutes took that flight. I know Mona is dead, and the only way the plan could be made to work, to look as if they ran off together, would be to kill your brother too."

  She closed her eyes and her hand clamped hard on mine. A small smooth pale hand, but quite strong. When she opened her eyes, they looked blank and dazed.

  "But it is so... so strange! What would be gained?"

  "We don't know. Not yet. But the search would continue, looking for a pair of lovers in hiding, and after a while it would die down. I guess the traditional guess would be that they had made a new life for themselves somewhere else."

  "Would her husband do that?"

  "I don't think so."

  She looked at the black case. I had put it on the table beside the chair. "Then that is sort of evidence, isn't it?" She stirred as though to stand. "I should tell the police."

  "Now wait a minute, Isobel."

  "Why should I wait a minute? If he was..."

  "Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it look as if they'd run away."

  "Then why was she killed where you could see it happen?"

  "I don't know. Maybe they didn't have any choice. Maybe they had it planned another way, and it didn't work out and they had to improvise."

  "But if my brother was abducted..."

  "Prove it."

  "He left his kit here."

  "An oversight. He picked up another drugstore in El Paso."

  "But..."

  "Livingston is in Esmerelda County. Sheriff Fred Buckelberry is conducting the investigation."

  "He and a deputy were here last evening. At about eight o'clock. They told me about the car and the flight they took. Mostly it was to tell me to get in touch with him right away if I got any word from John. They were... lazy and ironic and sarcastic about the whole situation." She tilted her head to the side, frowning. "It does seem more logical."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I didn't really think he would... ever actually run off with her. I thought he had too much balance for that. I was just trying to make him see that he had to stop seeing that woman. There was too much gossip about it. I couldn't imagine his arbitrarily destroying himself. But if people came here and... took him away... He hated violence. He... wasn't a strong man. He never wanted to... to hurt anyone...."

  Past tense. I think she suddenly realized she was using the past tense. Her eyes filled and she made a small yowl of heartsick pain and hitched forward in the chair, and slumped against me in the helpless awkward abandon of pain and sorrow. I held her. She rolled her head back and forth against my chest, gulping and whimpering, automatically seeking that small comfort to be had from a physical closeness, even with a stranger.

  But suddenly when I patted her shoulder, she tensed and jumped back away from me as if I had been a basket of snakes.

  "Excuse me," she said in a narrow little voice. She seemed to make herself small in the chair. I saw then that her eyes were a very very dark blue, the darkest blue I have ever seen in eyes of man or woman. Lifeless hair, pliant white body, smell of vanilla, and sexual fear. Noble refuge for the unrealized woman-caring for the adored brother.

  I realized that she had been uncommonly bitter about the Mona-brother relationship, alluding to the sexual basis of it the way she might discuss a suppurating wound. No wonder she had thought these were two fine years. Her twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth? A good place to wait away the nubile years, hasten the drying of juices, all in the honorable name of dedication. A Mona Yeoman would be repulsive to her, inevitably. Mona walked with too much awareness of her body and its uses.

  "You met Mona?" I asked.

  "He thought we should get along. That was one of his worst ideas. She patronized me, as if I were some backward child. I just... I just can't imagine her dead. She was so... blatantly alive, Mr. McGee."

  "Travis. Or Trav."

  "I am not very good at first names. It takes me a long time."

  "It's a gimmick I don't particularly care for. I thought it might make you feel more at ease with me, Isobel."

  "I'm almost never at ease with people. I... I guess it was the way we were brought up."

  "How was that?"

  "Both my parents were artists. My father was successful and my mother had an inherited income. We lived miles from anyone. The school lessons came by mail. They took turns teaching us. Canada in the summer. A little island in the Bahamas in the winter. John was the one who was always ill. We all fretted about him. I was always so healthy. You learn to... invent games you can play by yourself. They died three years ago. Just two months apart. They were very close. We always felt like outsiders, John and I. And that made us close. And now... What am I going to do! What in God's name am I going to do!"

  She got out of the chair and edged past me and walked to the table. She picked a book up and droppe
d it and turned, leaning against the table.

  "Why would anyone want to kill him? I can't believe you. You know that, don't you? I just can't believe you."

  "About Mona?"

  "Y-Yes, I can believe that. She was so... definite. She could make enemies. But John is such a mild man, really. With a wry little sense of fun."

  "How in the world did they meet?"

  "They met just about a year ago. Her husband came to a dinner party at the president's home. We were invited. Mr. Yeoman had given some money to a scholarship fund. John was seated next to Mrs. Yeoman. She pretended to have some interest in contemporary philosophy. They were talking Heidegger, Broad, Ryle, Sartre, Camus. She was one of those clever people who know just what to say about something they know nothing about. And she had met Camus in Paris years ago. John is at his best when the conversation is in his field. He can say very challenging things. She started driving down every week to audit his Friday seminar in the Philosophy of Democracy, paid avid attention, kept a very detailed notebook, did a lot of outside reading. That's the way it started. It was a vicious smoke screen of course, all that manufactured interest. He was just a new species to her. I told him to be very careful. She didn't seem to be in any great hurry. She didn't seduce him until last April. He came blundering in with some fantastic story about her car breaking down. She used to come right here to pick him up. Shamelessly. It was really pathetic. He didn't stand a chance, of course. She was a very clever and determined woman. And bored, I expect."

  "Do you have anyone to stay with you, Isobel? Or anyone you can stay with?"

  "No. I don't need anything like that."

  "I don't think you should phone that Sheriff."

  "Because it doesn't mean enough that his kit should be here?"

  "Partly that. But this whole thing has been... organized pretty well. I want to find out as much as I can. Quietly. I think that if I start making any noise, I could end up working on the county roads. Whatever happened to Mona and your brother, it is one factor in something else. There are a lot of things stirring around under the surface."

  "But what if my brother needs help!"

  She was close to the edge again. "Isobel, the only way we can force action to get help to him is to prove that they did not take that plane yesterday. People are too damned willing to believe they did, even her husband. I think the Sheriff may be a little opportunistic, but I don't think he's corrupt. I'm pressuring him to look further into my story of Mona's death. If he comes up with something, then it should be evident that neither of them took that feeder flight."

  "But how long will that take you! He could be in some..."

  I saw that I wasn't going to be able to quiet her down. I would have to move her around. "I want to go back to the Carson Airport. I want to poke around a little. You have to get that car, don't you? Why don't you come along?"

  She hesitated and gave an abrupt nod. "Give me time to change."

  Four

  BEFORE SHE locked the house, I had her show me where the car was kept. The carport was in the rear, off the kitchen. The side road passed in back of all the garden apartment layouts. The side walls of the carport were high. If somebody had waited for John Webb, or had entered after he was at home on Monday afternoon, it would have been no trick to pack him up, bundle him out and drive away with him. I did not mention to her that they could have hammered the top of his head in before even putting him into the car. And in this vast empty chopped-up terrain, there were thousands of quiet places to put him.

  She locked the place, after checking to be certain she had her set of car keys. She had changed to a gray skirt in a loose weave. It looked a little too big for her. She wore a yellow cotton blouse, and brought a sweater along. She had an old lady purse, dark gray leather, well worn and very sedate. She wore nylons and black shiny moccasins. And she wore big wraparound sun glasses, tinted almost black. With her eyes obscured, her face seemed totally without expression, and smaller than before.

  She directed me down into the village and told me where to turn. She sat erect and remote, purse in her lap, hands folded over the clasp. Violence leaves such vulnerable victims.

  "Where in the Bahamas?"

  "What? Oh, I don't think you'd know it. It was just about a mile long and about three hundred yards wide. It was near Old Mallet Cay."

  "South of the Joulters. On the banks, a little way in from the Tongue of the Ocean. It's very tricky water there. Plenty of coral heads."

  "Then you do know it!" Her voice sounded younger.

  "If it's the one I'm thinking of there's an old gray house there, pretty well storm-battered, near a nice little protected anchorage. Most of the island is volcanic rock. The house faces west."

  "That's it!"

  "Did you sell it?"

  "We never owned it. My father got it on a lease from the crown. Ninety-nine years. You can't sell those leases, you know. They can be passed along to the direct heirs, and when the time is up they revert. John and I have talked about going back one day."

  "Was there no inheritance?"

  "Mother's money was just for her lifetime. And it wasn't a big income, really. My father was always in total confusion about taxes. And he made fantastic investments. After everything was settled, John and I got a little over nine hundred dollars apiece. You know, I loved that island. There's a beach and a bar behind it. I can remember how lovely it was in the moonlight. The beach was like snow. We all used to get as brown as Bahamians."

  "You don't look as if you'd ever been in the sun."

  "I think I got too much of it when I was a child. My lips are allergic now. They puff up and break out in sores. I'd love nothing better than to just... lay in the sun and bake until the world gets far away"

  "How long since you've tried?"

  "Years."

  "They have some new things now. You know, miracles of chemistry. There's a paste that screens out every kind of ray."

  "Really?"

  "Guaranteed."

  "Could you get me some? Would you know what to ask for?"

  "Of course."

  "This may sound... perfectly idiotic to you. But... if you are right... if some horrible thing has happened to John, it would be easier for me to bear it if I could just bake myself all loose and weak and far away. It's like a drug for me. Mr. McGee, when did you last see that house?"

  "Two years ago, in the spring."

  "Did you go ashore?"

  "No. But I put the glasses on it. It's all shuttered. It looks sound."

  "I guess it would be a great deal of work to make it livable again, clean out the drains and cisterns and all that. We had a sturdy old boat, a dear thing. Four hours to New Providence, and that was the great event, picking the wind and weather, leaving when it was just bright enough to see."

  Her voice was lighter and more flexible when she talked of that, her posture. more relaxed. I made note of it. It could make her easier to quiet down, knowing that much about her.

  I took the long tilted curves of the mountain country, working up, and then through a pass and down the far side to a plateau country, to fenced areas where there was a coarse graygreen grass, to open land of mesquite, sagebrush, cactus. This was State Road 202, less traveled than 100, a little narrower and older.

  There were a few towns built in the Spanish pattern. The road curved around them, avoiding the old route of narrow cobbled streets constricted by walls, and on the newer road were the cafes and garages, small pastures of automobiles most brutally slain.

  As we neared Carson I could see, far beyond it, the mountains I remembered from the flight in, purpled with distance, streaked with high marks of canyon snow. The airport was on the north side of town. The terminal was new and small, pale fabricated stone and tinted glass panels.

  There was free parking in lots on either side of the building. A quarter mile away was a shabby sun-weathered hangar and private service area, where a score of small bright planes were staked out in formal array on the dusty ha
rdpan. There were about forty cars parked in the two lots. A little cream and red plane was shooting landings.

  We arrived at quarter after noon.

  "I don't see our car," she said.

  "What is it?"

  "It's a dark red DeSoto. I don't know what year. It's quite old. No, it isn't here anywhere. But the Sheriff said it would be here. I wonder if John could have..."

  "Let's see what we can find out," I said, and parked. We walked out of sun heat into the airconditioned chill of the terminal. A man stood just inside the door. He had a chauffeur hat, a big belly, a damp cigar end, little gray pebbles for eyes, and an air of petty authority.