Beyond This Point Are Monsters
Page 18
“It wasn’t my fault, none of it was my fault. I wasn’t even living at the ranch when it happened. I only went back that night to try and get some money from my father. I was a little roughed up from fighting—I ran into Luis Lopez in a bar in Boca—and that put my father in a bad mood. He wouldn’t give me a nickel, so I decided to go over to the mess hall and touch Lum Wing for a loan. If my father had given me some money, like he should have, I’d never have been anywhere near that mess hall, I’d never—”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses. Just report what happened.”
“Rob—Mr. Osborne saw the light in the mess hall and came in to investigate. He asked me what I was doing there and I told him. He said Lum Wing was asleep and I wasn’t to bother him. And I said why not, money’s no use to an old man like that, all he does is carry it around. Anyway, we started arguing back and forth.”
“Did you ask Robert for money?”
“No more than what he owed me.”
“Robert had borrowed money from you?”
“No, but he owed it to me for my loyalty. I never said a word to anybody about seeing him come in from the field right after his father’s accident. He was carrying a two-by-four and it had blood on it. I had climbed up one of the date palms looking for a rat’s nest and I watched him throw the two-by-four into the reservoir. I was just a kid, ten years old, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.” He blinked, remembering. “I was always climbing up crazy places where no one would think of looking. That’s how I found out about him and Mrs. Bishop, I used to see them meet. It went on for years, until he got sick of her and she walked into the river. It was no accident, like the police claimed . . . Well, I never said a word about those things to anybody. I figured he owed me something for my loyalty.”
“In other words, you tried to blackmail him.”
“I asked him to pay me a debt.”
“And he refused.”
“He came at me, he hurt me bad. He’d have killed me if it hadn’t been for the knife I took from Luis Lopez. I hardly remember the fight, except he suddenly fell on the floor and there was blood all over. I could tell he was dead. I didn’t know what to do except get away from there fast. I started to run but I caught my sleeve on a yucca spike outside the door. I was trying to get loose when I looked around and saw my father. He was staring at the knife in my hand. He said, ‘What have you done?’ and I said I got mixed up in a fight between Mr. Osborne and one of the migrants.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Yes. But he said no one else would. I had a bad reputation for fighting and Mr. Osborne was an Anglo and things would go hard for me.”
“So he helped you.”
“Yes. He thought we should make it look like a robbery, so he gave me Mr. Osborne’s wallet and told me to throw it away like I was to throw away the knife. He brought some blankets from the bunkhouse and we wrapped Mr. Osborne in them and put him in the back of the old red pickup. My father said no one would miss it. That was when the dog suddenly appeared. I kicked at him to make him go away and he bit me, he bit me on the leg, and when I drove off he chased the truck. I don’t remember the truck hitting him.”
“Did you leave the ranch before the migrants returned from Boca de Rio?”
“Yes.”
“And of course it was quite simple for Estivar to handle them. He had hired them, he paid them, he gave them their orders; he spoke their language and was a member of their race. All he had to do was tell them the boss had been murdered and they’d better get out of there fast if they wanted to avoid trouble. Their papers were forged, they couldn’t afford to argue, so they left.”
“Yes.”
“And you, Felipe, what did you do?”
“I dropped the body off the end of a pier, then I drove across the border. It was the beginning of a weekend, there were hundreds of other people waiting to cross. No one was looking for me and no one at the ranch noticed the pickup was missing. If they had, my father would have covered for me.”
“I’m sure he would. Yes, Estivar is very sentimental about his sons. You can hear it in his voice when he says my sons. My sons, as if he were the only one who had ever had a son—” Her voice had begun to tremble and she paused for a minute to regain control. “And that’s the whole story, Felipe?”
“Yes.”
“It hardly seems worth all the money I offered, especially since there were two quite serious mistakes in it.”
“I told you the truth. I want my money.”
“Both mistakes concerned Robert. He didn’t get sick of Ruth Bishop. On the contrary, they were planning to go away together. I naturally couldn’t allow that. Why, she was old enough to be his mother. I ran her off the place like a stray bitch . . . The other mistake was about the two-by-four you saw Robert throw into the reservoir. It had blood on it, his father’s blood, but Robert hadn’t put it there. He was protecting me. We must keep the record straight.”
“I want my money,” he said again. “I earned it.”
“And you’ll get it.”
“When?”
“Right now. The safe is in the front bedroom. You can open it yourself.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how. I never—”
“You just turn the dial according to my instructions. Come along.”
The safe was built into the floor of the bedroom closet and concealed by a rectangle of carpeting. She removed the carpeting, then stood aside while Felipe knelt in front of the safe.
“Left to three,” she said. “Right to five. Left to—”
“I can’t make out the numbers.”
“Are you short-sighted?”
“No. It’s too dark in here. I need a flashlight.”
“I think you’re short-sighted.” She picked up Robert’s horn-rimmed glasses from the bureau. “Here, you’ll be able to see better with these.”
“No. I don’t need—”
“Try them on. You may be surprised at the difference.”
“I have good eyes, I’ve always had good eyes.”
But even while he was protesting she was putting the glasses in position on his face. They slid down past the bridge of his nose and she pushed them back in place. “There. Isn’t that an improvement? Now we’ll start over. Left to three. Right to five. Left to eight. Right to two.”
The safe didn’t open.
“Gracious, I hope I haven’t forgotten the combination. Perhaps it’s left to five to begin with. Try again. Don’t hurry it. I can’t let you rush off immediately anyway.” She reached out and touched the top of his head very gently. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, son.”
during the night one of the neighbors woke to the sound of a piano and went to sleep again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Millar (1915-1994) was the author of 27 books and a masterful pioneer of psychological mysteries and thrillers. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, she spent most of her life in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband Ken Millar, who is better known by the nom de plume of Ross MacDonald. Her 1956 novel Beast in View won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. In 1965 Millar was the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year Award and in 1983 the Mystery Writers of America awarded her the Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement. Millar’s cutting wit and superb plotting have left her an enduring legacy as one of the most important crime writers of both her own and subsequent generations.
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF MARGARET MILLAR
Available as individual ebooks or in a special seven-volume collector’s set
Volume I
The Paul Prye Mysteries
The Invisible Worm (1941)
The Weak-Eyed Bat (1942)
The Devil Loves Me (1942)
Inspector Sands Mysteries
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sp; Wall of Eyes (1943)
The Iron Gates [Taste of Fears] (1945)
Volume II
Fire Will Freeze (1944)
Experiment in Springtime (1947)
The Cannibal Heart (1949)
Do Evil in Return (1950)
Rose’s Last Summer (1952)
Volume III
Vanish in an Instant (1952)
Wives and Lovers (1954)
Beast in View (1955)
An Air That Kills (1957)
The Listening Walls (1959)
Volume IV
A Stranger in My Grave (1960)
How Like an Angel (1962)
The Fiend (1964)
Beyond This Point Are Monsters (1970)
Volume V
Tom Aragon Novels
Ask for Me Tomorrow (1976)
The Murder of Miranda (1979)
Mermaid (1982)
Volume VI
Banshee (1983)
Spider Webs (1986)
The Couple Next Door: Collected Short Mysteries (2004)
It’s All in the Family (1948) (semi-autobiographical children’s novel)
Volume VII
The Birds and the Beasts Were There (1968) (memoir)
For more information visit www.syndicatebooks.com