“Can I help to get her upstairs?” I said.
“She can sleep here. She often has. This happens two or three times a week. We’re used to it.”
Mildred sat at her mother’s feet and looked around the room as if to memorize its shabby contents. She stared at the empty eye of the television set. The empty eye stared back at her. She looked down at her mother’s sleeping face. My feeling that their ages were reversed was stronger when she spoke again:
“Poor redhead. She used to be a genuine redhead, too. I give her money to have it dyed. But she prefers to dye it herself, and save the money for drinking. I can’t really blame her. She’s tired. She ran a boarding-house for fourteen years and then she got tired.”
“Is your mother a widow?”
“I don’t know.” She raised her eyes to my face. “It hardly matters. My father took off when I was seven years old. He had a wonderful chance to buy a ranch in Nevada for very little down. Father was always getting those wonderful chances, but this was the one that was really going to pay off. He was supposed to come back for us in three weeks or a month, when everything was settled. He never did come back. I heard from him just once. He sent me a present for my eighth birthday, a ten-dollar gold piece from Reno. There was a little note along with it, that I wasn’t to spend it. I was to keep it as a token of his love. I didn’t spend it, either. Mother did.”
If Mildred felt resentment, she didn’t show it. She sat for a time, silent and still. Then she twitched her slender shoulders, as though to shake off the dead hand of the past:
“I don’t know how I got off on the subject of Father. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.” She changed the subject abruptly: “This man Rica, at the Buenavista Inn, what kind of a person is he?”
“Pretty dilapidated. There’s not much left but hunger. He’s been on dope for years. As a witness he may be useless.”
“As a witness?”
“He said that Carl told him he didn’t shoot Jerry.”
Faint color rose in her face, and her eyes brightened. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“You didn’t give me a chance to. You seemed to have a rendezvous with a truck.”
Her color deepened. “I admit I had a bad reaction. You oughtn’t to have put your arm around me.”
“I meant it in a friendly way.”
“I know. It just reminded me of something. We were talking about those people at the Inn.”
“I thought you didn’t know them.”
“I don’t know them. I don’t want to know them.” She hesitated. “But don’t you think you should inform the police about what that man said?”
“I haven’t made up my mind.”
“Did you believe what he said?”
“With reservations. I never did think that Carl shot his brother. But my opinion isn’t based on Rica’s testimony. He’s a dream-talker.”
“What is it based on?”
“It’s hard to say. I had a strange feeling about the events at the ranch today. They had an unreal quality. Does that fit in with anything you noticed?”
“I think so, but I couldn’t pin it down. What do you mean, exactly?”
“If I could say exactly, I’d know what happened out there. I don’t know what happened, not yet. Some of the things I saw with my own eyes seemed as if they’d been staged for my benefit. Your husband’s movements don’t make sense to me, and neither do some of the others. That includes the sheriff.”
“It doesn’t mean Carl is guilty.”
“That’s just my point. He did his best to try and prove that he was, but I’m not convinced. You’re familiar with the situation, the people involved. And if Carl didn’t shoot Jerry, somebody else did. Who had a motive?”
“Zinnie had, of course. Only the idea of Zinnie is impossible. Women like Zinnie don’t shoot people.”
“Sometimes they do if the people are their husbands, and if they have strong enough motives. Love and money are a strong combination.”
“You know about her and Dr. Grantland? Yes, of course, you must. She’s pretty obvious.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Not long, I’m sure of that. Whatever there is between them started after I left the ranch. I heard rumors downtown. One of my best friends is a legal secretary. She told me two or three months ago that Zinnie wanted a divorce from Jerry. He wasn’t willing to give it to her, though. He threatened to fight her for Martha, and apparently she dropped the whole idea. Zinnie would never do anything that would lose her Martha.”
“Shooting Jerry wouldn’t lose her Martha,” I said, “unless she was caught.”
“You’re not suggesting that Zinnie did shoot him? I simply don’t believe it.”
I didn’t believe it, either. I didn’t disbelieve it. I held it in my mind and turned it around to see how it looked. It looked as ugly as sin.
“Where’s Zinnie now, do you know?”
“I haven’t seen her since I left the ranch.”
“What about Martha?”
“I suppose she’s with Mrs. Hutchinson. She spends a lot of her life with Mrs. Hutchinson.” Mildred added in a lower tone: “If I had a little girl like Martha, I’d stay with her and look after her myself. Only I haven’t.”
Her eyes brightened with tears. I realized for the first time what her barren broken marriage meant to her.
The telephone rang like an alarm clock in the hall. Mildred went to answer it.
“This is Mildred Hallman speaking.” Her voice went higher. “No! I don’t want to see you. You have no right to harass me.… Of course he hasn’t. I don’t need anyone to protect me.”
I heard her hang up, but she didn’t come back to the sitting-room. Instead she went into the front of the house. I found her in a room off the hallway, standing in the dark by the window.
“What’s the trouble?”
She didn’t answer. I found the light switch by the door, and pressed it. A single bulb winked on in the old brass chandelier. Against the opposite wall, an ancient piano grinned at me with all its yellow keys. An empty gin bottle stood on top of it.
“Was that Sheriff Ostervelt on the telephone?”
“How did you know?”
“The way you react to him. The Ostervelt reaction.”
“I hate him,” she said. “I don’t like her, either. Ever since Carl’s been in the hospital, she’s been acting more and more as if she owns him.”
“I seem to have lost the thread. Who are we talking about?”
“A woman called Rose Parish, a social worker at the State Hospital. She’s with Sheriff Ostervelt, and they both want to come here. I don’t want to see them. They’re people-eaters.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re people who live on other people’s troubles. I hope I headed them off. I’ve had enough bites taken out of me.”
“I think you’re wrong about Miss Parish.”
“You know her?”
“I met her this morning, at the hospital. She seemed very sympathetic to your husband’s case.”
“Then what’s she doing with Sheriff Ostervelt?”
“Probably straightening him out, if I know Miss Parish.”
“He can use some straightening out. If he comes here, I won’t let him in.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“I suppose I am. No. I hate him too much to be afraid of him. He did a dreadful thing to me.”
“You mean the day you took Carl to the hospital?”
Mildred nodded. Pale and heavy-eyed, she looked as if her youth had run out through the unstopped wound of that day.
“I’d better tell you what actually happened. He tried to make me his—his whore. He tried to take me to Buenavista Inn.”
“That same day?”
“Yes, on the way back from the hospital. He’d already made three or four stops, and every time he came back to the car he was drunker and more obnoxious. Finally I asked him to let me off at the nearest bus st
ation. We were in Buena Vista by then, just a little way from home, but I couldn’t put up with him any longer.
“I was forced to, however. Instead of taking me to the bus station, he drove out the highway to the Inn, and parked above it. The owner was a friend of his, he said—a wonderful woman, very broad-minded. If I wanted to stay there with her, she’d give me a suite to myself, and it wouldn’t cost me a cent. I could take a week’s vacation, or a month’s—as long as I liked—and he would come and keep me company at night.
“He said he’d had this in mind for a long time, ever since his wife passed away, before that. Now that Carl was out of the way, he and I could get together at last. You should have heard him, trying to be romantic. The great lover. Leaning across me with his bald head, sweating and breathing hard and smelling of liquor.”
Anger clenched in my stomach like a fist. “Did he try to use force on you?”
“He tried to kiss me. I was able to handle him, though, when he saw how I felt about him. He didn’t assault me, not physically, if that’s what you’re getting at. But he treated me as if I—as if a woman whose husband was sick was fair game for anybody.”
“What about Carl’s alleged confession? Did he try to use it to make you do what he wanted?”
“Yes, he did. Only please don’t do anything about it. The situation is bad enough already.”
“It could get worse for him. Abuse of office cuts two ways.”
“You mustn’t talk like that. It will only make things worse for Carl.”
A car purred somewhere out of sight. Then its headlights entered the street.
“Turn off the light,” Mildred whispered, “I have a feeling it’s them.”
I pressed the switch and crossed to the window where she stood. A black Mercury Special pulled in to the curb behind my convertible. Ostervelt and Miss Parish got out of the back seat. Mildred pulled down the blind and turned to me:
“Will you talk to them? I don’t want to see them.”
“I don’t blame you for not wanting to see Ostervelt. You ought to talk to Miss Parish, though. She’s definitely on our side.”
“I’ll talk to her if I have to. But she’ll have to give me a chance to change my clothes.”
Their footsteps were on the porch. As I went to answer the door, I heard Mildred running up the stairs behind me.
chapter 24
MISS PARISH and the sheriff were standing in uncomfortable relation to each other. I guessed they’d had an argument. She looked official and rather imposing in a plain blue coat and hat. Ostervelt’s face was shadowed by his wide hatbrim, but I got the impression that he was feeling subdued. If there had been an argument, he’d lost.
“What are you doing here?” He spoke without force, like an old actor who has lost faith in his part.
“I’ve been holding Mrs. Hallman’s hand. Hello, Miss Parish.”
“Hello.” Her smile was warm. “How is Mrs. Hallman?”
“Yeah,” Ostervelt said. “How is she? She sounded kind of upset on the telephone. Did something happen?”
“Mrs. Hallman doesn’t want to see you unless it’s necessary.”
“Hell, I’m just interested in her personal safety.” He looked sideways at Miss Parish and added for her benefit, in an injured-innocent tone: “What’s Mildred got against me?”
I stepped outside and shut the door behind me. “Are you sure you want an answer?”
I couldn’t keep the heat out of my voice. In reflex, Ostervelt put his hand on his gun-butt.
“Good heavens!” Miss Parish said with a forced little laugh. “Haven’t we got enough trouble, gentlemen?”
“I want to know what he means by that. He’s been needling me all day. I don’t have to take that stuff from any keyhole cop.” Ostervelt sounded almost querulous. “Not in my own county I don’t.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Archer.” She stepped between us, turning her back on me and her full maternal charm on Ostervelt. “Why don’t you wait for me in the car, Sheriff? I’ll talk to Mrs. Hallman if she’ll let me. It’s obvious that her husband hasn’t been here. That’s all you wanted to know, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but—” He glared at me over her shoulder. “I didn’t like that crack.”
“You weren’t intended to. Make something out of it.”
The situation was boiling up again. Miss Parish poured cool words on it: “I didn’t hear any crack. Both you men are under a strain. It’s no excuse for acting like boys with a chip on your shoulder.” She touched Ostervelt’s shoulder, and let her hand linger there. “You will go and wait in the car, won’t you? I’ll only be a few minutes.”
With a kind of caressing firmness, she turned Ostervelt around and gave him a gentle push toward the street. He took it, and he went. She gave me a bright, warm look.
“How did you get him eating out of your hand?”
“Oh, that’s my little secret. Actually, something came up.”
“What came up?”
She smiled. “I did. Dr. Brockley couldn’t make it; he had an important meeting. So he sent me instead. I asked him to.”
“To check up on Ostervelt?”
“I have no official right to do anything like that.” The door of the Mercury slammed in the street. “We’d better go inside, don’t you think? He’ll know we’re talking about him.”
“Let him.”
“You men. Sometimes I feel as though the whole world were a mental hospital. It’s certainly a safe enough assumption to act on.”
After the day I’d put in, I wasn’t inclined to argue.
I opened the door and held it for her. She faced me in the lighted hallway.
“I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“I got involved.”
“I understand you have your car back.”
“Yes.” But she wasn’t interested in my car. “If you’re asking the question I think you are, I’m working for your friend Carl. I don’t believe he killed his brother, or anybody else.”
“Really?” Her bosom rose under her coat. She unbuttoned the coat to give it the room it needed. “I just got finished telling Sheriff Ostervelt the same thing.”
“Did he buy it?”
“I’m afraid not. The circumstances are very much against Carl, aren’t they? I did manage to cool the old man off a bit.”
“How did you manage that?”
“It’s official business. Confidential.”
“Having to do with Carl?”
“Indirectly. The man he escaped with, Tom Rica. I really can’t give you any more information, Mr. Archer.”
“Let me guess. If I’m right, I know it already. If I’m wrong, there’s no harm done. Ostervelt got Rica off with a state-hospital commitment when under the law he should have been sent to the pen.”
Miss Parish didn’t say I was wrong. She didn’t say anything.
I ushered her into the front room. Her dark awareness took it in at a glance, staying on the empty bottle on top of the piano. There was a family photograph beside it, in a tarnished silver frame, and a broken pink conch shell.
Miss Parish picked up the bottle and sniffed it and set it down with a rap. She looked suspiciously toward the door. Her bold profile and mannish hat reminded me of a female operative in a spy movie.
“Where’s the little wife?” she whispered.
“Upstairs, changing her clothes.”
“Is she a drinker?”
“Never touches the stuff. Her mother drinks for both of them.”
“I see.”
Miss Parish leaned forward to examine the photograph. I looked at it over her shoulder. A smiling man in shirtsleeves and wide suspenders stood under a palm tree with a strikingly pretty woman. The woman held a long-dressed child on her arm. The picture had been amateurishly tinted by hand. The tree was green, the woman’s bobbed hair was red, the flowers in her dress were red. All the colors were fading.
“Is this the mother-in-law?”
“Apparently.”
“Where is she now?”
“Dreamland. She passed out.”
“Alcoholic?”
“Mrs. Gley is working at it.”
“What about the father?”
“He dropped away long ago. He may be dead.”
“I’m surprised,” Miss Parish murmured. “I understood Carl came from quite a wealthy—quite a good background.”
“Wealthy, anyway. His wife doesn’t.”
“So I gather.” Miss Parish looked around the mortuary room where the past refused to live or die. “It helps to fill in the picture.”
“What picture?” Her patronizing attitude irked me.
“My understanding of Carl and his problems. The type of family a sick man marries into can be very significant. A person who feels socially inadequate, as sick people do, will often lower himself in the social scale, deliberately declass himself.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions too fast. You should take a look at his own family.”
“Carl’s told me a great deal about them. You know, when a person breaks down, he doesn’t do it all by himself. It’s something that happens to whole families. The terrible thing is when one member cracks up, the rest so often make a scapegoat out of him. They think they can solve their own problems by rejecting the sick one—locking him up and forgetting him.”
“That applies to the Hallmans,” I said. “It doesn’t apply to Carl’s wife. I think her mother would like to see him put away for good, but she doesn’t count for much.”
“I know, I mustn’t let myself be unfair to the wife. She seems to be quite a decent little creature. I have to admit she stayed with it when the going was rough. She came to see Carl every week, never missed a Sunday. Which is more than you can say for a lot of them.” Miss Parish cocked her head, as if she could hear a playback of herself. She flushed slowly. “Good heavens, listen to me. It’s such a temptation to identify with the patients and blame the relatives for everything. It’s one of our worst occupational hazards.”
She sat down on the piano stool and took out a cigarette, which I lit for her. Twin lights burned deep in her eyes. I could sense her emotions burning behind her professional front, like walled atomic fires. They didn’t burn for me, though.
The Doomsters Page 14