by Zenith Brown
“Who did it, Nick?”
He shook his head back and forth, trying to speak. “Nobody. Nobody, Mr. O’Leary.”
“How did it happen?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“You mean you’re scared to say.”
“I don’t know, I tell you! I don’t know!”
“How much did they get, Nick?”
Over by the door the glass panel of the half-dollar slot machine was smashed, the back pried off.
Nick’s voice rose. “I tell you, I don’t know, Mr. O’Leary!”
“Have you called Yerby?”
“No! No! I don’t call nobody!”
“Then I’ll call him.”
“No, no, no!” Nick Pappas jumped off the stool. “They ruin me if I call him! I don’t call . . . you don’t call, Mr. O’Leary!”
Spig turned away abruptly. “All right. The kids are out here. We’ve brought the vegetables. You want to go out and get them? I’ve got to go on in town.”
“Okay.”
Spig heard him running out through the dine-and-dance room and the swish of the kitchen door. He waited a moment, and went over to the slot machine. The job had been clumsy but effective. There was no way of telling how much they’d got. The sucker-bait woman had put seventy bucks into it while he was watching her.
He went back to the kitchen. The kids were helping carry the baskets in.
“They stay and have a glass of milk,” Nick said.
“Okay, I’ll go on.”
Nick came out to the car with him. “You don’t say nothing, Mr. O’Leary. Please, Mr. O’Leary.”
“What time did it happen, Nick?”
“I don’t know. I close up half-past one. I go home right away. I don’t know what time. I got no proof, Mr. O’Leary.”
“Have you got insurance?”
“No, no! They call the sheriff. I got trouble already, Mr. O’Leary.”
“Okay, if that’s the way you want it. I think you’re crazy.”
“Sure, I’m crazy. You go crazy too. Trouble . . . all the time trouble.”
Spig drove on into the town. The day began early in Courthouse Square. It was a quarter to eight by the clock under the cupola, but the only empty car space was where the curb was painted a fresh new yellow too bright for him to overlook. He drove on to the side street and around to the yard in back where the cars from the sheriff’s office were parked. As he pulled in beside them, he saw coming from the back door Pete Greenway, the owner, editor, copy boy and janitor of the Devon County Weekly Times-Gazette, a big city newsman who’d bought his Utopia and was sticking it out. He saw Spig and changed course.
CHAPTER X
“THE NEW DEPUTY, Buck tells me.”
O’Leary shook his head. “That was yesterday.”
“You got a minute?”
“Fifteen. I see Yerby at eight. But if it’s about Ashton, no comment. I was the last to get the word.”
“The hell with Ashton. That guy gives me curare darts in the seat of my chair.” Greenway opened the car door and eased himself into the seat beside Spig. “This fellow Dunning. What gives with him?”
O’Leary drew in cautiously. “He’s a friend of the Ashtons. A painter. Getting ready for a New York show.”
“Called ‘Rural America,’ ” Greenway said. “Rural America—a New Look. I got a matt on him from his galleries. A noble character who’s tossed aside the family riches. Prefers a dry crust in a heatless garret. After he’d bought the fancy car, naturally. How come he can afford to paint for free? Mrs. Nathan Twohey, for instance? Is she an example of the new look in rural America?”
“He’s not painting Mrs. Twohey. You speak in jest,” O’Leary said urbanely.
“It’s the truth. I swear it. Six sittings, so far. After the fourth she gave him a tea. A ladies’ tea, last week. I was invited. I went. That I wanted to see. Every time I’ve seen Arthur Dunning, he’s been a stinker nonpareil . . . But there he was, charming as all hell, pouring it on, all the old Devonites lapping it up, the disembalmed I’ve heard about but never seen out in the three years I’ve been around. All bending his ear, including the old rector, the other member of the male trinity present at the party.”
Spig took a cigarette from the mashed humid pack Greenway held out.
“You’ve got me,” he said.
“Could there be a kind heart under an unlikely exterior?”
“Could be.”
Greenway shrugged. “The next day, and thereafter, he comes to the Gazette. Devon County fascinates him, he says. He’s boning up on its history, including the public prints. So will I let him see the old files? Sure, I said. But there’s only one historic period he’s bothered with. You couldn’t guess what it is. Or could you?”
“I know nothing about the guy,” Spig said patiently.
Greenway blew a sceptical feather of smoke into a series of diminishing rings.
“Well, in case you’d like to know, it’s the approximate period of the George Sudley demise in the cottage on Plumtree Cove. The only scuttlebutt I ever heard about that was suicide, maybe, not accident. But I don’t move among the disembalmed. Nor has Dunning, till he started painting the estimable widow of the deceased arbiter of all Devon. And every time Dunning caught my eye at this tea party, he grinned like a zany. Malevolent little bastard. Now, if you’re ready for the question, this is it. Something’s up . . . what’s the switchblade twist?”
He backed out of the car.
“Just asking, that’s all.” He dropped his cigarette and wiped his foot over it. “Just asking. Wasn’t it Nat Twohey and Harlan Sudley out at the blind with George, that morning it happened?”
“Not at the cottage,” Spig said. “The way I’ve heard it. They went on across the river, oyster tonging.”
“So I’ve been told,” Pete Greenway said pleasantly. “Mrs. Sudley was at the tea, by the way. Nat was there a minute. Very unhappy, he looked to me. It was your friend Miss Fairlie that lost most blood from the velvet claws unsheathed at times. But that was a cover-up. It was the accident Dunning was trailing . . . hot scent if ever I smelled one. Well, it’s your house. I thought you might have noticed him around lately.”
He turned away. “So long. Your neighbours are on the rampage, by the way. Ashton sure pulled an ageing raw one on you all. I’m going to phone in some trenchant questions, next time his TV panel meets. It’s not the Planned Society scares me. It’s the Planners.”
He lounged off across the yard to the street. O’Leary sat there; the cigarette, a column of grey ash intact in his hand, burned clear to the filter. It was the cupola clock striking eight that jolted him back. As he got out of the car he was aware of Pete Greenway on the other side of the wall, watching him intently. Greenway grinned at him then, waved his hand and went on across the street to the one-story building that housed the Gazette.
O’Leary closed the car door, the picture of Tip clear and distinct in his mind. I’m not going to have him poking around here. He hadn’t asked why Tip had taken it for granted it was Dunning he’d find downstairs at that hour of night. He’d skipped over that far too lightly, himself taking for granted that what the old judge said was true: no one now alive except himself, Miss Fairlie and David would know about the post box in the chimney breast. If Dunning was on the trail of Nat Twohey and Harlan Sudley, with Greenway close behind him, how long would it take him to get to the old judge, with the efficient help of Mrs. Twohey, getting her licks in on Miss Fairlie, not knowing she was being rigged into an arch-betrayal? His jaw tightened. This was disturbing. It was strange how deeply disturbing . . . strange how much you could care for somebody you’d known so briefly, how much you could love someone you knew so little, the old judge and Miss Fairlie. He’d never thought about it that way till then, but it was the truth. It didn’t matter to him what the old judge had done, or that Miss Fairlie was bats more than half the time. Or was it O’Leary who was bats?
He went across the yard to t
he back door of the Court-house. The corridor was filled with scaffolding where the interior face-lifting of the frowsty old building was still going on, liquor and gambling machines licences footing the bill—prosperity quick and easy for Devon County.
“Austin J. Yerby. Sheriff. Private,” it said on the door. Spig knocked.
“Come in. Oh, it’s you.” Yerby grinned at him, “I was just figuring you’d forgot.”
The face-lifting hadn’t got to the dingy room with the creaking chair and battered desk, ruts worn in the old floor, a horsefly buzzing savagely at the rotted screen.
“I didn’t forget.” Spig closed the door. “But I’ve changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been sticking around. Getting the score, like you said. I’d probably have killed Ashton last night, if he hadn’t been dead drunk. Also I don’t like people calling me in the middle of the night, telling me to lay off or else. No danger to my wife and kids if I quit trying to block the sale. It looks like there’s other stuff that disqualifies me, too.”
Yerby looked at him silently for a moment. He creaked his chair forward then, opened his desk drawer and took out a typed sheet.
“This is the oath you take,” he said dispassionately. “It says: ‘I Blank, do swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the State, and support the Constitution and Laws thereof, and that I will to the best of my skill and judgment diligently and faithfully, without partiality or prejudice, execute the office of Deputy Sheriff of Devon County according to the Constitution and Laws of the State. And I further declare my belief in the existance of God.’ ”
He put it down on the desk and looked back at Spig. “It doesn’t say anything, any place I see, about going to confession first. A man’s innocent until he’s found guilty, the way they’ve always told me. What it says is you’ll execute the office to the best of your skill and judgment, without partiality or prejudice.”
“So if I kill Ashton, I arrest myself.”
“Don’t be a goddam fool, O’Leary. What good would it do you? Anita’s a hell of a lot tougher than Ashton. Or do you plan to kill her, too?”
Spig shook his head. “No. And I don’t plan to kill Ashton. I’d just like to, is all.”
“What else you got that’s eating you?”
“Plenty.” He hesitated. It was Dunning, via Greenway, he had in mind, but he sat tight on that. “If you see something, and the guy it’s happened to is scared to report it, what do you do?”
Hard ridges stood out on Yerby’s jaw. “Where is it this time?” he asked evenly. “The lowdown, white-livered rats.”
“Who?”
“The whole lousy bunch of ’em. The gang that does it and the suckers that take it. That’s your Devon Death Strip. I hear something, I go out, and don’t anybody even know what I’m talking about. This is the fourth one the last two months that I’ve heard of. Whose place is busted open now?”
He jerked his chair back from the desk. “You can tell me, I’ll leave you out of it. It won’t do them any good, they’ll be scared to prosecute, but it’ll do me good. I can see if it’s the same gang. I’ll get ’em some day. Who is it?”
“Nick at the Three D. His wall’s smashed in, fifty cent slot broken open.”
“Even Nick’s afraid to tell me.”
“He sure is.”
“All right. I’ll go see him. What else?” He was angry and brusque. “What else you got? I’m beginning to think you’re yellow, too.”
“Not yellow,” Spig said peaceably. “Maybe I’m scared. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I guess I’d better. Or maybe you’d better go talk to Pete Greenway.”
“I don’t talk to Greenway if I can help it. His idea of news and mine don’t gee. He likes a stink, I don’t.”
“It’s a stink I’m scared about,” Spig said quietly. “I’d like to ask you one question?”
“Go ahead.”
“If some guy—like Dunning out at the Ashtons’—started grubbing around, deep enough, with plenty of local help, could he dig up anything . . . about George Sudley, for——”
He stopped abruptly. The anger draining out of Yerby’s eyes left them old, haggard and unseeing. The rigid knots along his lean jaw slackened. He drew a long, deep breath and settled back in his chair. “Not again, for God’s sake,” he said, but it was to himself, not to Spig. He sat there, staring at his desk, silent for a long time. He looked up then.
“He’d have to dig mighty deep, Spig,” he said slowly. “And have a lot of help.” He pulled his chair forward, picked up a pencil and put it down again. “Tell me about it,” he said evenly. “I thought Dunning was a painter, a picture painter?”
Spig nodded. “He’s also a stinker, first-class. He’s getting up what he calls a gallery of rural types. People around here. Not flattering. Maybe digging up old dirt’s a part of it. Greenway says he’s been boning up on the George Sudley era. He’s painting a portrait of Mrs. Twohey.”
There was a gleam, sharp and alive in Yerby’s eyes.
“She had a tea, Greenway says, for Dunning to meet all the old-timers.”
“The damned old she-cat. Hasn’t the brains——” Yerby broke off. He sat looking down at the desk again. “Look Spig,” he said finally. “My father was sheriff here fifty years, right in this room. He and the old judge between them ran the county. In a place like this, you don’t just die and be done with it. Sixty per cent of the people that vote for me do it because my father was a great guy. Believe me, he was. I don’t want ’em to think he covered up a murder . . . just for a friend of his. George Sudley’s dead. I want him to stay dead. It’s not only my father. It’s . . . a lot of other people. And it’s not that I’m trying now to cover up for anybody. It’s just wrong, Spig. Wrong to go on crucifying people, dead or alive.”
He got up and picked up his hat. “Come on. The clerk’s waiting. I need you. To ride herd on Dunning, if nothing else.”
The clerk of the court was across the hall. Spig took the oath.
“You sign the ledger here, Mr. O’Leary.”
Spig signed it.
Yerby shook hands with him and gave him his credentials, a small badge to pin in his wallet.
“I’m going out to Nick’s,” he said.
“I’m going to see Nat Twohey.”
Yerby looked at him sharply. “Not about Dunning?”
“About Ashton.”
“Maybe I’ll slip across with you a minute.”
They went out the front portico and down the herringbone walk to the street. There, coming towards them, was something Spig had heard about but had never with his own eyes seen. Miss Celia Fairlie was approaching them in her army jeep, painted fire-engine red, with the crystal vases of an old-fashioned electric landau attached to the windshield, pink rosebuds in one, yellow in the other. Behind the wheel, very tiny, very erect, sat Miss Fairlie, a chiffon veil tied in a knot under her chin to keep her stiff, white sailor hat from jouncing wind-blown off her head. She sounded her horn, put her hand out as far as it would go, sounded again and made a smart right turn square into the centre of the yellow painted kerb, square against the fire hydrant, ten empty feet on either side, stopped, pulled on her brake and sat there, untying her veil, preparing to descend. A fresh pair of white cotton gloves was on a straw basket in the seat beside her. She put them on, rose, slipped nimbly on to the old carriage stair that was an added accessory and on to the street, brushing her white skirt and straightening her hat.
She blinked her pale blue eyes at Yerby.
“Thank you, Austin, for saving me my place to park.”
“It’s a pleasure, Miss Fairlie,” Yerby said blandly. “But you didn’t call me. I wasn’t expecting you to be in town to-day.”
“Nor did I expect to be here. It’s the cigarette butts he leaves around.”
“Someone leaves cigarette . . .”
“The chimney sweep.” Miss Fairlie
blinked at him, vague again. “It’s very disturbing to the child. Because he prowls.”
“Do you mean someone prowls around Eden, Miss Fairlie?” Buck Yerby asked quietly. “Day or night?”
“Oh, at night,” Miss Fairlie said. “But he couldn’t be the one who’s ringing my telephone, I think. It’s very annoying.”
“Who rings your phone?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t answer it. I’m sure there’s no one I wish to talk to in the middle of the night. Or in the daytime either except young Nat Twohey. But that beldame tells me he’s sick to-day. I’m not sure I wish to discuss a gate with her listening at the keyhole. But I must go now.”
She went. Spig O’Leary materialised from the invisibility she’d cast him into, a hard white pallor around his mouth.
“So they’re calling her up too.”
“Take it easy,” Yerby said evenly. “You’re on her line, aren’t you? I’ll see if they’ll switch her night calls to you. Maybe we can trace them. And those cigarette butts . . . and the chimney sweep.” He grinned briefly. “If any. You’ve got a gun, haven’t you? Okay, you’re a deputy sheriff. Eden’s your beat. You see anybody at night doesn’t belong there, you shoot. Shoot to kill. That’s your instructions. I don’t care who he is”
CHAPTER XI
THERE WAS a somnolent stillness out at the Ashtons’. O’Leary looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past nine, too early for them. Or for Arthur Dunning, whom he had no interest in seeing. The matchstick curtains were still drawn in the two-room studio apartment over the garage that had been Kathy’s house . . . the old shack, Stan had called it. Dunning’s yellow midget car was in the middle of the road where Lucy had left it. Anita’s Cadillac, still alongside the bright blue convertible, where it had been when Spig made his other call, blocked the drive in front of the house. He pulled to a stop behind the midget, prepared to cool his heels.