Detour to Death

by Helen Nielsen

  “Thank you,” Laurent murmured. “I’m not a senator, but I appreciate the honor.”

  “You wouldn’t if you knew what I think of senators! But you look the way a senator should look. Doesn’t he look like a senator, Murph?”

  Murph was a little flustered. In the five years Alexander Laurent had been living in these parts this was the second time he’d set foot in the Pioneer Hotel. The first time was the day he’d come to see Trace Cooper about the sale of the old Cooper ranch. And who was this Laurent? Not being up on such matters, Murph wasn’t sure—but it was something important, famous even. A lawyer, that was it. A famous trial lawyer, but now he was retired and standing before Murph’s bar instead of a bar of justice. Murph began to chuckle at his own joke, which couldn’t be appreciated since he’d kept it to himself. To cover his embarrassment, he repeated the standard greeting to all new faces before him.

  “What’ll you have?”

  Laurent considered the matter with grave eyes. He looked about him, picked out a booth at the far side of the room, and said, “Whatever Mr. Cooper is having—and in a booth, please. Will you join me, Mr. Cooper?”

  “Sorry,” Trace said, “I’m busy. I’m arranging a funeral.”

  “Isn’t this a peculiar place for doing that?”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Murph broke in, but Trace silenced him with one defiant glance. “Not at all!” he insisted. “I spoke to the good Reverend Whitlow this afternoon, but he didn’t seem very happy about putting in a word for a sinner. I don’t think he could, anyway. If I know Francy she won’t even show up at the pearly gates; she’ll go around to the family entrance.” Trace finished off the rest of his drink and smiled crookedly at the empty glass. “But you didn’t know Francy,” he reflected. “Only the worst people knew Francy. She was a cute kid, wasn’t she, Murph?”

  “She wasn’t exactly a kid any more,” Murph said.

  “Nor am I,” Laurent observed ruefully. “At my age a bar stool can become extremely uncomfortable. Bartender—”

  By the simple means of snatching Trace’s bottle from under his nose, Laurent achieved the impossible: he took Trace away from the bar. Of course, he took him only as far as a booth across the floor, but even that was progress. Murph followed with a pair of glasses, and then returned to the business of preparing to close up. Maybe the great Alexander Laurent could do something with Trace.

  The first thing Laurent did was to remove his expensive straw hat and place it on the seat beside him. The light from an ornate wall bracket, long since converted to electricity, danced over the deep waves of his silver hair, and his steady gray eyes studied Trace Cooper’s face for several moments before he spoke.

  “I understand that you are an attorney, Mr. Cooper,” he said at last.

  “Who told you that?” Trace countered.

  “One of the few friends I had—Doctor Gaynor.”

  The name had a sobering effect. The drink Trace had poured himself just sat there for a while. “I knew the old man went out to the ranch now and then,” he said, “but I didn’t know you had such dull conversations.”

  “Oh, they weren’t dull, Mr. Cooper. The doctor told me a great deal about this town and its inhabitants. I was particularly interested in the Coopers, of course.”

  “Why, is the house haunted?”

  “The house is charming.”

  “And comfortable, Mr. Laurent? Roomy, spacious—”

  “All of those things. Your forebears built well.”

  “But on the sand,” Trace muttered. “What’s this talk all about, anyway? Surely you don’t need a lawyer!”

  The remark was supposed to be funny, but Laurent didn’t copy Trace’s twisted smile. Instead he grew even more grave. “Someone needs a lawyer,” he said. “You must know what happened at Mountain View today. Old Doctor Gaynor was murdered and robbed of a sum of money he had just received on the premises. The sheriff is holding a young hitchhiker the doctor picked up on the road.”

  Laurent spoke quietly but the magic of a voice that had held juries spellbound was not lost. Trace had to listen.

  “Virgil Keep is no fool. He’s holding the boy incommunicado until his case is airtight, but you can’t keep secrets in this town. Already there are troubling rumors. If this Danny Ross is guilty of murder he deserves a fair trial; but if he is innocent—” Laurent paused to give his argument the needed force. “If he is innocent, Mr. Cooper, then the murderer of my friend goes free.”

  It wasn’t easy for Trace to follow Laurent’s words, and all that bourbon he’d consumed didn’t help a bit. And yet the very tone of his voice was saying that this was important, this he must understand.

  “Make your point,” Trace said.

  Laurent smiled faintly. “To ascertain the facts in a murder case requires a great deal of investigation. There are reasons, personal reasons, why I can’t do the job myself. That’s why I’ve come to you.”

  “To me!” Trace had tried hard to take this conversation seriously, but now he threw back his head and laughed. “The great Alexander Laurent,” he cried, “comes to me!”

  “The old, weary Alexander Laurent,” answered the man across the table, “asks you to help him—and Danny Ross.”

  • • •

  Danny was crying. The one thing he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do, no matter what, and the first blow had set him bawling like a baby. “Get up!” Virgil said, and Danny couldn’t do anything else with that big hand on his collar. He knew what he was supposed to say, but the words wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t have done any good, anyway, because all that anger in the big man’s eyes hadn’t been put there by a skinny kid in Levi’s. Now Danny was on his feet again, propped up against the wall of the cell and tensed for the next blow.

  “Virgil! Virgil, what are you doing?”

  Danny wished the woman would stay out of it—she only made the sheriff angrier; but Ada was at the cell door, her eyes wide and moist, and her rough hands grasping the bars.

  “Get the hell back where you belong!” Virgil roared.

  “He’s only a boy, Virgil!”

  “A boy? He’s old enough, Ada, even for you. He wears pants—”

  The second blow was more vicious than the first. Danny crumpled like an empty sack and slid halfway down the wall before that heavy hand grabbed his collar again. For a minute he thought his head was splitting, on account of the ringing, and then the ringing became the phone on the sheriff’s desk in the next room. Virgil, straddle-legged and tall, turned his head. Oh, God, keep it ringing!

  Through a corridor of pain and distance Danny heard the woman’s trembling voice.

  “Yes, this is the sheriff’s office. Yes, Virgil’s here. The Pioneer Hotel? Yes, Mr. Murphy, I’ll tell him to hurry.”

  Yes, please tell him to hurry. Hurry someplace—any place out of this cell! Danny raised his head and saw Ada back at the bars again talking rapidly, mentioning a name he’d heard before. Trace Cooper. Trace Cooper was drunk and tearing up somebody’s bar. The sheriff muttered an oath and let loose of Danny’s collar. God bless, Danny breathed, God bless a drunk—Trace Cooper.

  CHAPTER 4

  THERE’S NEVER BEEN A NIGHT YET that didn’t end eventually. Danny’s ended with a metallic crash, a heavy thud, and a man’s brief curse. At first Danny thought it was just a continuation of the bad dreams he’d been having, but then he opened his eyes and blinked at the early morning sunlight streaming over the high window sill. Just the sunlight, way out there in the open beyond the bars, but it was a wonderful thing to know the night was over at last. While he was trying to remember where he was, and why the dreams had been so frightening, reality moved in and began to take over where the dreams left off.

  The bars were real. The hardness under him was a narrow cot, and every muscle in his body protested when Danny shifted his weight and propped himself up on one elbow. He was locked in a small cell—a cage actually, separated from a similar cell by a partition of bars.
In this adjoining cell a man with red hair was sitting on the floor trying to pry one foot out of a tin bucket.

  “Worst damn hotel in town,” the man muttered. “Sometimes I wonder why I keep coming back.”

  Now Danny began to remember about the man in the next cell. Quite a scrapper he was. The sheriff was no midget by any means, but he’d had his hands full putting this boy away. In the effort he seemed to forget all about Danny Ross and the confession he was supposed to make, and that alone was reason enough to make this man a friend. The crooked grin on his face was another.

  “At least when I fell out of bed I landed on my—on the bucket,” Trace Cooper said. “You must have landed on your face.”

  Danny caught on to what the man was talking about when he tried to open his mouth. There was a cut on his lower lip that gave his mouth that rusty iron taste, and his jaw was swollen until it seemed out of line. But Danny had enough trouble without asking for more. He leaned back on the cot again and closed his eyes.

  “Antisocial,” Trace muttered. “It’s not bad enough that he kills old man Gaynor, he has to be unfriendly besides.”

  “I didn’t kill the old man!” Danny yelled. “I didn’t kill anybody!”

  Danny’s head almost flew off when he jumped up from the cot so fast. He stumbled and grabbed hold of the bars for support. His legs were like old rubber bands.

  “Take it easy,” Trace said. “I don’t care if you did kill him. He lived long enough—maybe too long.”

  “That’s a crazy thing to say!”

  “Why? Three score and ten, that’s all the Bible gives you. Charley had a couple of years on the good book at that.”

  There was no way to figure this character. He had kicked away the bucket but was still sitting on the floor, crosslegged and relaxed, as if he owned the place. Aside from an overnight growth of rusty beard and the slept-in condition of his suit, he seemed no worse for the load he’d carried in with him. He hauled a pack of cigarettes and a folder of matches from one wrinkled jacket pocket and lit up, then stuck the matches inside the pack and tossed them to Danny.

  “Thanks,” Danny said. “The sheriff took mine last night.”

  “When he took the money,” Trace suggested.

  “It’s my money! I worked for that dough!”

  “How much did the old man have, anyway? There’s a story going around that it was three—four hundred dollars.”

  “Two hundred,” Danny said.

  “Then you did take it.”

  “The hell I did! I saved six months to get that bank roll. It was that guy in the raincoat—”

  But Danny didn’t get a chance to go into that story again just then; somebody was approaching down the hall, and maybe it was just as well not to be caught talking to the other prisoner. It didn’t take much to irritate the sheriff. But it wasn’t Virgil Keep who came to the door of Trace Cooper’s cell. It was Ada, her faded hair in curlers and her meager figure encased in a loose-fitting robe. She was bearing a tray of food that smelled strongly of hot coffee.

  “I thought I heard you awake in here,” she said brightly. “How are you feeling this morning, Mr. Cooper?”

  Nice and friendly, Danny thought. Even extra friendly, as if this redhead was a distinguished guest instead of an overnight lockup. And get that Mister Cooper! Only the way Ada pronounced it made the name sound like Cupper.

  The man on the floor struggled to his feet and executed a mock bow. “All things considered, not too bad,” he answered.

  “I wondered after last night.”

  “Was it worse than usual last night?”

  “Much worse, Mr. Cooper. But then I guess you were feeling bad about Francy and poor Doctor Gaynor.”

  A shadow crossed Trace’s face, dark but swift. Then he brightened. “Here, let me take the tray, Ada. Don’t tell me it’s oatmeal again!”

  “I’m afraid so, the county—”

  “I know, I know. The county allows only fifty cents a day for feeding prisoners. Here, give mine to my friend in the other cell. He looks as though he needs something strengthening.”

  Suddenly Danny was starving hungry. Last night he couldn’t have swallowed a bite even if the sheriff had allowed Ada to feed him, which he wouldn’t; but murder or no murder, phony charge or no phony charge, Danny was young with an appetite to match. There was oatmeal and coffee and a couple of pieces of wilted toast on the tray, but it might have been top sirloin from the way Danny dug in.

  “Ada, my love,” Trace said through the bars, “did I ever tell you that your coffee tastes like liquified charcoal?”

  “You mustn’t talk that way,” she protested. “Virgil might hear.”

  “If he hasn’t found out by this time, he’ll never know,” Trace muttered, but Danny could see that the woman wasn’t joking. She looked frightened, almost as if Cooper had made a pass at her—and that was about the silliest thing imaginable. But then again maybe it wasn’t, because now the sheriff had stepped into the hall with the wrath of Jehovah on his dour morning face.

  “Ada, what are you doing out here?” he demanded. “Get back to the kitchen!”

  “I was just bringing breakfast to the prisoners,” she stammered.

  “In your nightgown? Couldn’t you put some clothes on before parading around, or would that spoil your fun?”

  Ada reached up instinctively and pulled the collar of her robe tighter about her stringy throat. If she was wearing a nightgown under that garment it certainly couldn’t be seen, for the skirt swept the top of her scuffed house slippers. What could be seen were the quick tears that brightened her eyes as she backed off down the hall, and something else, too. Something almost like a smile. How that could be Danny didn’t know, but in a world so full of strange and terrible things anything was possible.

  But Virgil wasn’t smiling. He had the briefest of glances for Danny, and a few choice words for Trace Cooper. “It beats me why you do it,” he said. “Why can’t you leave that poison alone?”

  “Every man to his own poison,” Trace murmured. “I don’t bother you about yours.”

  “Mine? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never touch the stuff— What the devil’s going to become of you, Trace? You’re not a rich man any more.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me that, Virgil.”

  “Then straighten up and stop acting like a kid! For a while after you came home I actually thought the Army had made a man of you—”

  “The Army!” Trace grinned and threw Danny a broad wink. “What’s so wonderful about the Army? It’s just a lot of civilians wearing the same kind of pants.”

  Maybe it wasn’t the funniest crack in the world, but Danny laughed, high-pitched and nervous like the way he felt every time the sheriff looked at him. And the laugh was a big mistake because it set him up right in the center of attention. It gave Virgil an easy way out of a losing argument.

  “Well, look who’s feeling so chipper!” he said, and Danny wilted.

  “He doesn’t look chipper to me,” Trace remarked. “Funny thing, Virgil, but I never knew before that cells have doorknobs.”

  “You keep out of this!”

  “Why? I’m a taxpayer.”

  “So was old Charley Gaynor, but he’s not any more.”

  “I told you last night, I told you a hundred times,” Danny protested, “I never killed the old man! I never even touched his wallet!”

  All this time Trace had been participating in the conversation with a sort of sleepy-eyed indifference, but now he became interested. A wallet? What wallet? What did Virgil have on the kid, anyway? Virgil was too astonished at the thought of anybody in Cooperton not knowing all about Danny Ross to be exclusive. He spelled out the whole story, right from the moment Danny had walked into Walter Wade’s café with the doctor until he’d been discovered standing beside the corpse with bloodstained hands and a pocket full of money.

  “But what about the wallet?” Trace insisted. “If the kid took it shouldn’t it be on him?
”

  Virgil snorted. “Of course not! Why would he keep incriminating evidence like that. He had plenty of time to throw the wallet away before Viola and Walter found him.”

  “Then it’s still out there somewhere. Why don’t we look for it?”

  Virgil’s head might look like a chopping-block, but it wasn’t that thick. A scouting expedition to Mountain View was the first item on his morning agenda, and he would have explained that to Trace in no uncertain terms except for one word in the redhead’s question. “We?” Virgil echoed.

  “Sure,” Trace said, “you and Danny and me. You because you need that wallet for evidence, Danny because he knows where he threw it, and me because—” Trace stretched out his long arms and yawned “—because Murph will never prefer charges for what I did to his bar, and there’s nothing like a ride in the country to clear a morning-after head.”

  • • •

  Trace Cooper seemed to get everything he wanted. Everything he asked for, everything he said—that’s how it happened.

  “Call Arthur and have him pick me up in the jeep,” he ordered, and the sheriff, like an obedient servant, trotted to comply. Everybody hopped when Cooper spoke, maybe because he expected them to hop. Danny would have to watch this and see how it was done.

  It was still early when they left town. The stores along Main Street weren’t open yet, and the attendants at a couple of gas stations passed on the way were just getting the pumps unlocked. Danny wasn’t alone with the sheriff on this ride. Not one, but two, deputies were included in the expedition, and right behind the sheriff’s sedan rolled a bright red jeep driven by a big black in an Army issue windbreaker with Trace Cooper lounging on the seat beside him.

  “Why the escort?” the younger deputy asked. “What’s Trace got on his mind?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “What mind?” he challenged.

  But it was a beautiful morning, still cool enough for Danny’s leather jacket although the sun was getting warmer with each degree it mounted. Over the mountains lining both sides of the road a veil of mist stretched thinner and thinner until it pulled apart and began to disappear before his eyes, and there were bird songs and pungent mustard smells that made the earth seem good again, and made death a faraway thing that wasn’t going to happen until he was too old to care. This time yesterday Danny was driving the old jalopy toward a dot on the map called Red Rock; this time tomorrow he should have been safely across the border. Those things were real and rational; only the present was a lie.