A Purple Place For Dying

by John D. MacDonald

  "I know."

  "And your Miss Webb isn't going to take it very well. Neurotics and sexual cripples never do."

  "I think she's letting herself begin to admit it, an inch at a time. She might be able to take it pretty well. Everybody is an amateur psychologist. Great devotion to the brother. With how much resentment mixed in? But it isn't my problem. None of this is my problem. I should go back where I came from."

  "But this made you angry?"

  "Yes. It made me angry. And those clowns thought I was making it up. Can you brief me on that Buckelberry?"

  "Fred is all right. College athlete. Honor student. A very pretty and very ambitious wife. Two kids. Graduate work in police methods and procedures. But he doesn't want to be Sheriff too much longer."

  "Political bug?"

  "No. There's a lot of money in Esmerelda County. He's rubbed up against a lot of it. He handles himself well. And he has got the executive touch. He'll do his job, but he isn't going to offend any of that money over there that might be important to his future. He's looking."

  "Do you think Jass Yeoman could be behind this whole thing, Mike? After all, hiring you, trying to hire me, she was trying to damage him."

  "How seriously? She was playing pretend. She had the scene of herself standing up in court, pointing to Jass, denouncing him, riding off into the sunset with a million dollars in hand and loverboy professor beside her. When I was trying to unravel her problems, I used to get the play by play. She would just chew the living hell out of Jass, tear her hair, break things, scream at him. He would ride along with it, and a few days later they would go out to his old ranch and ride and swim, kidding around, playing gin for blood, checking out the riding stock he was breeding out there, and he would jolly her right into bed. She would be so damned mad at herself when she'd come back to town, and swear it wouldn't happen again, and actually make herself forget it had happened. Mona believed what she wanted to believe but, you see, Jass was her reality. Daddy, friend and lover. And the rest of it was just some game she was trying to play. Jass knew it wouldn't last. But it made him itchy having to wait it out. He could have chased John Webb a thousand miles, but that would just martyr him and make him more attractive to Mona. I think, if she'd proposed it, Jass would have settled for giving Webb a month or two of her. But Mona and Webb idealized their love. They called it forever. An arrangement like that would have cheapened it. Jass didn't want to lose her-both for his own sake and for hers. Maybe he didn't have the right intentions when he married her nine years ago. But it worked into something else, as it often does when the marriage is for other reasons. She talked a lot to me. I saw just how it was. If she had had it in her power to smash Jass she would have done so, because that was part of the daydream, but she would have been heartbroken later."

  "And would she have brought anybody else down with Jass?"

  "If she could have done anything?" He shrugged. "Claymount is dead. The old judge is dead. It could have stung Wally Rupert a little, maybe, because any real thorough checking would show he was in on that grab."

  The attendant rapped on the door and opened it. "Coming back in," he said. "Thanks, Harry. Travis, if you want me along when you talk to Buckelberry, if you want to talk to him again, it can be arranged."

  "Thanks, I'll manage."

  "Stay in touch," he said and hastened off, shouldering himself into his suit coat.

  Five

  I FOUND Isobel standing by a drinking fountain, close to the wall but not leaning against it, her chin up, dark glasses on.

  I took a drink and straightened up and wiped my mouth and said, "I like that feisty little man."

  "You damn bastard!" she said. "She paid your way to come here. What were you talking about in there, you damn bastard? Were you eulogizing that whore?"

  "Isobel, dear, you shouldn't try to swear. You don't do it well. You make me think of a little girl in her Sunday frock, trying to throw mud balls."

  "Don't be quaint. I had about all the sappy sentimentality I could stand in there. Mazzari is a dirty-mouthed little man. You came here to try to work Mrs. Yeoman for some money, didn't you? She's dead now. I think I understand why you're so reluctant to stir things up about my brother being missing. It would spoil your chance to chisel money out of whoever did it. Did you and, Mazzari figure out some nice safe blackmail scheme?"

  "If you'd stayed we'd have had to cut you in, Isobel."

  She stamped her foot. "I insist that we take some official action immediately!"

  "Well, if you will start walking, we'll get into my car and we'll go to Esmerelda, and we will tell our tale to Sheriff Fred Buckelberry, if that isn't rushing it too much."

  "But... I thought you..."

  "Come along, dear Miss Webb. And learn a few more facts of life."

  "Oh, you know so damned much about everything, don't you?"

  * * *

  We arrived at the Sheriff's wing of the Esmerelda Country Courthouse at five after five. The Sheriff was not in. The desk man said he was expected very shortly. We sat on a corridor bench to await him. He came in about five minutes later, walking swiftly, followed by a meek looking young man in dark glasses and a pale blue denim suit. When Buckelberry saw us, he stopped so abruptly the other man nearly piled into him.

  "McGee," the Sheriff said. "Miss Webb." He gave a furtive glance up and down the corridor and said, "Come on in."

  We followed him back through overcrowded office space to a corner office. A man tried to spring at him with a sheaf of papers but Buckelberry waved him back. He ushered us in and closed the office door. He had a blue rug, blue draperies, white walls, gray steel furniture.

  He went to his desk, pressed an intercom switch and said, "No interruptions." He released it and said, "Miss Isobel Webb. Mr. Travis McGee. Lieutenant Tompkins. He is with the central CID setup for this area. Sit down, please. I imagine you have something to tell me or ask me, or you wouldn't be here. I will tell you something first. It may save us some time. We've just come from the hospital. The pathology lab. The search crew up at the cabin this afternoon found a dried fragment of tissue stuck against the side of a stone about seven feet from where you said she fell, McGee. The pathologist identified it as lung tissue. Mrs. Yeoman's blood type was on file at the hospital. We have a match there. In addition, the Webb vehicle was left in the airport parking lot between midnight and two A.M., Monday night. I got a phoned report from the technicians Lieutenant Tampkins sent to Carson to check the car over. It had been wiped clean. No significant stains. They vacuumed it, but I imagine that report won't mean much when we get it."

  He gave me a long challenging look, and I knew I was not going to get any apology or any thanks.

  I turned the other cheek by saying, "Nice work, Sheriff. I'll give you what we have very briefly. John Webb was a diabetic. He left his insulin kit behind. It was kept in the same cabinet with his toilet articles. They were taken. I talked with the stewardess who had the same flight yesterday. The couple who took that flight drank and used bad language. The male had noticeable scars on the right side of his neck. John Webb had no such scars. They were a rough match for Mrs. Yeoman and Mr. Webb. The woman wore a pale blue seersucker suit, red sandals with high heels and carried a red purse. The man may have been wearing dark slacks and a light sports jacket. The name of the stewardess is Madeline Houser. I am certain you can get an official statement from her."

  "You are inclined to meddle, McGee."

  "Meddle!" Isobel gasped.

  "Sheriff, I drove Miss Webb over there to get the car. You told her where it was. It was gone. We had lunch. I realized that same flight was due. I thought that the best thing to do would be to try the stewardess while it was still fresh in her mind, if it was the same one. If you didn't get to her for three or four days, I doubt she would have remembered much about it, certainly not the details of how the woman was dressed. It was an impulse, Sheriff."

  Tompkins cleared his throat and said hesitantly, "I suppose that any info
rmation... regardless of source..."

  "I want to know where my brother is!" Isobel said loudly.

  "So would I," Buckelberry said.

  "Aren't you going to look for him?" she demanded.

  He dropped his curt official manner. He had proved his point. He was a good cop. Even if I had pressured him into it, through Jass Yeoman, he was still a good cop.

  "Miss Webb, be logical now. He left or was taken away Monday afternoon. This is Wednesday. Today you've decided he didn't go away with Mona Yeoman. All day yesterday you were sure he had. Miss Webb, my God, there are better than six thousand seven hundred and fifty square miles in Esmerelda County, and this time of year every last stinking little dirt road is passable. Every decedent we got on hand is identified, and there's no John Doe in any hospital. I signed away my soul to get the use of a helicopter all day to try to locate Mrs. Yeoman's little white car, and there's no word on it yet. I'm working a hundred-man county with a sixty-man outfit. Now just exactly what the hell do you expect me to do?"

  She seemed to crouch and aim at him. "Sheriff, I expect you to spread the word. I want this on television and radio and in the newspapers. I want everybody to know that Mona is dead and my brother is missing. I want a posse and... and boy scouts and... the National Guard searching every darned inch of all those square miles."

  He leaned back and made a tent of strong hairy fingers and stared at her. "You force me to be frank with you, Miss Webb."

  "Please do. It would be refreshing."

  "I'm convinced there's been a murder. I haven't a damned thing to go on. I haven't even got a body. I won't bore you with what I have to do. Coroner's jury, completed file approved by the state's attorney, grand jury indictment. Miss Webb, my cop sense tells me that the very best thing I can do is continue a quiet investigation and let whoever did it believe they got away with it, that we believe Mrs. Yeoman and your brother took off for El Paso. If we start beating all the drums, this thing is going to get so muddied up we'll never get anyplace. And the people we want will hide twice as hard."

  "Then my brother's safety means nothing compared to your performance."

  "My cop sense tells me your brother is already dead. Alive he could turn into a very awkward loose end. I think he died before the woman died."

  She shrank in the chair and put the back of her hand against her mouth and stared at him. "Even if there was only one chance in a thousand... You can't stop me from going to the newspaper."

  "Go ahead, Miss Webb. They'll check with me. That would be automatic. I'll tell them that Mrs. Yeoman and your brother took off together. That's the same thing I'm going to tell Jass Yeoman within the hour, that I checked it and it was just the way we thought it was. You can stir up a little gossip, Miss Webb, but you can't give them anything they'll print."

  "But if Mr. McGee comes with me and verifies it..."

  Buckelberry glanced at me and said, "Ask him."

  She turned and looked at me. I shook my head sadly.

  "You damn bastard," she whispered.

  "Isobel, dear, these are the facts of life I was telling you about. I think I know what Sheriff Buckelberry is going to do next. Listen to him."

  "I am going to comb this county for tall dark thin men with scars on the right side of their neck, Miss Webb. And for buxom blondes who own blue seersucker suits and red shoes. And I am going to let some things slide I will catch hell for later, and I am going to check out those people, and I am going to find one or both of them. And I am going to make them sweat and beg for the chance to tell me every little thing they know. If I did it your way, they might never come back into this county. And I would rather have either of them than ten thousand cross-country boy scouts. I am going to be checking out every heavy scope rifle in the area. I am going to send two damn good Indians into those rocks tomorrow, up north of that cabin. I am getting an expert analysis of the explosive used to block that road, and I'm going to find out where it came from."

  "Where is my brother!" she yelled.

  He sighed, opened a steel file drawer in his desk, poured a jolt of bourbon into a glass and brought it to her.

  "I don't drink."

  "For God's sake, girl, this is not a cocktail party. This is medication. Gulp it down!"

  She took it, shot a sidelong and unfriendly glance at me, drank it down. She gasped and coughed.

  "What can I do?" I asked the Sheriff.

  "Try to settle her down."

  "Aside from that?"

  "Aside from that, stay out of this."

  "Why aren't you telling Jass?"

  "Because I'd get no help from a crazy man, any more'n I can get from a keyed-up woman."

  Isobel thrust her arms out, fists balled. She screwed her face up and yelled, "FIND MY BROTHER!"

  "Oh, dear God," Buckelberry said. Without a hat his head looked strange. There was so much wide jaw, it made his head look triangular, almost pointed at the top. "What am I going to do?" He looked as if he wanted to put his head down on his desk and cry.

  I tried a different approach. "You can't reason with her, Sheriff," I said. "This one is a genuine intellectual. She is an emotional basket case. She had an unhealthy symbiotic relationship with the brother. She's about twenty-six and so she's supposed to be grown up. But you can see for yourself. Childish frenzy. Limited contact with reality. She is so basically screwed up, a thing like this is going to land her at the funny-farm sooner or later, so the simplest thing is get it over with right now. You are authorized to commit, aren't you? The lieutenant and I are witnesses to violent and irrational behavior. Frankly Sheriff, I would feel safer if you would kindly stash her away. Somebody thinks this elopement gimmick worked in spite of my seeing her killed. And if it gets out that it didn't work, they might want to correct mistakes, and maybe leaving me alive was one of them. So if she could be tucked away and given some nice sleepy pills, it might be the best thing for everybody, her brother included."

  He saw my wink. She couldn't. He said, "Sometimes you make enough sense to astonish me, McGee. Miss Webb, you'll get the best of care out at Pinon Springs."

  For a few moments I thought we had pushed it too far. Her head swiveled in fast erratic motions as she stared in turn at the three of us, a glint of actual madness in those strange blue eyes. She clamped her hands hard onto the arms of her chair and sat, eyes closed, chin on her chest. She took very deep and audible breaths, her round breasts lifting against the yellow fabric of her blouse. Then her breathing softened and her hands loosened. She seemed to lift her head with an effort. She looked at Buckelberry and said in a quiet and controlled tone, "It is only natural that I should be very concerned about my brother."

  "I understand that, Miss."

  "Obviously you know more about this sort of thing than I do, Sheriff. I present one fact for your consideration. The Yeoman woman is dead. Nothing can be done for her. We do not know that my brother is dead. I think that should be your priority. He was taken from our home. Kidnapping is a federal offense."

  'We have no proof he was taken. Merely a supposition."

  "If you will give me your word that you will make finding my brother your first consideration, I will promise to... control myself."

  "You have my word."

  She grasped her purse and stood up slowly, timidly, looking as if she was poised to run. "Now if Mr. McGee could take me home?"

  "If we have any news, we'll contact you at once, Miss."

  I went out with her. She stumbled against me, walked uncertainly toward the corridor door, then stopped and leaned against the wall, head down, eyes closed, breathing deeply again.

  "It's all right now," I said.

  With eyes still closed she said, "I suppose it is all in getting used to knowing that you are nothing."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's too cruel, you know, to look directly at things." She looked solemnly up at me. "'Then you know that your father was glib and tricky and second-rate, and you know your mother was a very silly w
oman, and you know that your brother was really not a very good teacher, not much of a man, not much of anything. And you know that you are wasting yourself, running from a thousand things, hiding away at a third-rate institution in a damned wasteland. So why should the Sheriff or anybody care, one way or another? The illusions are so much easier to live with, Travis. The golden parents, the noble brother, the high calling, the devotion. The mysterious princess with the wise sad smile. Oh Christ, Travis, if you live without illusion, what do you have?"

  "Come along, Isobel."

  I took her arm and steered her toward the door. "What do they want of me?" she asked. I knew that They wasn't the police. Parents, perhaps. Or an amalgam of parents and brother and all the people of the world who had said, "My, what a bright strange little girl!"