Nothing's Certain but Death

by M. K. Wren

  It was asking a great deal of a man to forgive that.

  Two blocks east of his beachfront home, Conan turned left into a parking lane paralleling Highway 101, drove a half block, and stopped directly in front of the bookshop door. That was sheer perversity. Miss Dobie considered it a stone-etched tenet of good business that the best parking places must be left for customers, and she always parked a considerate distance from the shop, even if it meant trudging through a drenching typhoon to reach the door.

  And Conan didn’t even have the excuse of rain.

  Last night’s storm was well gone, sweeping east to the Cascades; the air was crystalline, the west wind salt-scented and bracing; the sun poured out a beatitude of warmth upon the row of ramshackle old shops facing the highway, of which the Holliday Beach Bookshop was the largest as well as the oldest and most ramshackle.

  This was his most prized possession, yet today he surveyed it with an atypically jaundiced eye, noting that three shingles were missing on one of the upstairs gables, and the trim needed painting.

  When he got out of the car, he slammed the door, which was also atypical; the Jaguar was another prized possession, and although its inner workings were to him analogous to the Delphic mysteries, he always treated it with awed respect.

  But it had been a long night. A long solitary night.

  The bells on the door jangled, and Beatrice Dobie, at the counter across from the entrance, offered a sunny smile.

  “Good morning, Mr. Flagg. Isn’t it a lovely day?”

  Conan muttered, “Good morning, Miss Dobie,” and went to the door behind and to one side of the counter. It was equipped with one-way glass and a sign reading “Private,” but he left it open. That was simply habit.

  This room, which he insisted on calling his office, was also a prized possession—rather, a small space serving to house some of his prizes: the Kirman on the floor; the Hepplewhite desk; a cast-iron half ton of an antique safe; the drawings, prints, and paintings—which included a Ben Shahn—crowding the paneled walls.

  In the exact center of the desk reposed another of his prizes, although he never made the error of thinking of Meg as a possession. He suspected she considered him a possession, however.

  He sat down in the big leather chair behind the desk, bringing his head nearly on a level with Meg’s.

  “Good morning, Duchess.”

  Siamese cats, Miss Dobie maintained, were descendants of royal houses, to which he always retorted that they had been rat catchers in the temples. But Miss Dobie adhered to the royal house lineage, adding, irrelevantly, that Meg was a blue-point Siamese, as if that made her blood even bluer.

  At that moment, the Lady was occupied with her postprandial ablutions, making a pretzel of herself, one hind foot pointed as gracefully as a ballerina’s so that she might wash each dainty, daggered toe.

  Conan didn’t disturb her, knowing that cleanliness is next to repletion in the feline lexicon, nor did he start checking the morning mail, which was generally his first order of business; Meg was sitting on it.

  He only slumped deeper in his chair, remembering, when Meg spared him a curious glance, that Isadora Canfield’s eyes were exactly the same shade of sapphire blue.

  And Isadora was in London.

  He was still glumly nursing that thought when Miss Dobie came in carrying a ten-pound tome bound in brown leather, her square face inflated with a beaming smile that made her look incongruously cherubic. She admitted to fifty-five years, but Conan always accepted such feminine admissions with private skepticism.

  “Look what came in the mail, Mr. Flagg.” She put the book down on his desk with a triumphant thump and paused meaningfully.

  But Conan didn’t comment, nor even move, and Meg, startled by the seismic impact of the book, unwound herself and departed, muttering inscrutable comments all the way to the door.

  Miss Dobie watched her go with an absent frown, then turned to her employer and offered enlightenment.

  “It’s the Gaston! Portland: Its History and Builders. The third volume. Remember, that collector in Kansas City—oh, what is his name? Chalmers. That’s it. F. T. Chalmers. Well, he offered fifty dollars for volume three to complete his set, and I found this at that estate sale in Amity last week and made a bid for ten. Of course, the asking price was forty, but I told Mrs. Jenks I can’t pay that kind of money and make anything on my time, and it wasn’t very likely she’d find anybody else who’d even offer ten for a single volume out of a set, and what did you do to your face, Mr. Flagg? And—oh, dear—did you break your wrist?”

  Conan regarded her with frank amazement, then waved toward the safe where the coffee pot wheezed.

  “Will you pour us some coffee, Miss Dobie? No, I didn’t break my wrist. It was a metacarpal bone.”

  She filled two mugs, placed one in front of him, and sat down in the chair across from him with the other.

  “Well,” she said to his metacarpal, then her gaze shifted to his empurpled jaw. “What happened to your face?” Conan grimaced as he seared his tongue on the coffee.

  “I was in a barroom brawl.”

  “Oh?”

  He lit a cigarette, ignoring her lifted brow and the pendant question in that syllable. When it became apparent that he didn’t intend to elaborate, she leaned back and crossed her legs with an air of studied indifference.

  “By the way, there was a call for you this morning.”

  Obviously, she was feeling as perverse as he.

  “When? Who was it from?” His first thought was Isadora, which was nonsense; when she was on tour her communications were limited to an occasional post card.

  “Oh…it was a little after ten; about half an hour ago. Earl Kleber.”

  He flicked his cigarette irritably against the rim of the ashtray.

  “What did he want?”

  “Well, I don’t know, but he said it was important. He wanted you to call him as soon as possible.”

  “He’s probably selling shares in the police pension fund.” Conan eyed the telephone as if it might explain the vagaries of Holliday Beach’s chief of police, but he didn’t make a move toward it.

  “I wondered,” Miss Dobie drawled, “if it might not have something to do with the terrible thing that happened at the Surf House Restaurant last night.”

  Miss Dobie’s mind worked in mysterious ways, and he read that as a probe; he had refused to elucidate on the barroom brawl. Still, he didn’t understand why she characterized that abortive scuffle as “terrible,” or how she happened to know about it.

  Of course, the Holliday Beach grapevine was extraordinarily efficient, and the bookshop was one of its main exchange centers, second only to the post office. Conan couldn’t guess why Chief Kleber would be interested in last night’s comedy of errors, but it was possible.

  He shrugged. “Well, I can’t think of anything else Earl would want to talk to me about.”

  Her eyes went round. “You know about it, then?”

  “Know about it?” That knowledge was not only painfully, but visually evident. “How could I not know about it?”

  She frowned in obvious confusion, which made it mutual.

  “You mean, you were there?” she asked.

  Conan was considering going home and starting the day fresh; it might make more sense the second time around. The ring of the phone came as a welcome diversion, and he answered crisply, “Holliday Beach Bookshop, may I help you?”

  “Conan? Oh God, I hope so.”

  He stared across the desk at Miss Dobie but only because she happened to be in front of him; he wasn’t seeing her. The voice was Brian Tally’s, and the husky tension in it sounded an immediate alarm.

  “Brian, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s about what happened last night. Conan, I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Last night?” He laughed uncertainly. “Look, I’m not going to sue you, so will you just forget about it?”

  “Forget about—” A spluttering pause, the
n, “Oh. I see what you…no, I didn’t mean—I guess you haven’t…heard about it, then.”

  Conan brought his eyes into focus on Beatrice Dobie, who seemed to be concentrating her every faculty on the task of lighting a cigarette.

  “No, Brian, apparently I haven’t heard about it.”

  “Well, it’s that…oh, damn”—he stopped for a long breath—“that IRS auditor.”

  “What IRS auditor?”

  “Nye. His name was Eliot Nye. He was the guy who came into the bar last night. The one I…I tried to…”

  Conan closed his eyes wearily. Leave it to Brian Tally to take a swing at an Internal Revenue Service agent.

  “Is he suing?”

  “Suing? Oh, Lord, I wish he was.” His next words came out with wondering hesitancy, as if he doubted their veracity himself. “Conan, he’s dead.”

  Finally, it was all beginning to make sense.

  That was the “terrible thing” that happened last night at the Surf House. Miss Dobie was still pointedly not listening, but under her auburned curls her ears were pink.

  Conan said into the phone, “I assume he didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “No. He was…murdered.”

  “How did—” He stopped, hearing Brian in a curt exchange with someone else; a man’s voice.

  Brian concluded that conversation with an impatient, “All right, I said I’d tell him. Conan, Earl Kleber’s here. He wants to talk to you. You’re a witness.”

  “A witness?” The only thing he could testily to was Brian’s unsuccessful attempt to treat Nye to a mouthful of fist. But perhaps that was a large “only.”

  That bungled assault was meaningful in relation to Nye’s death only if Brian was a suspect. A murder suspect. “Brian, where are you?”

  “The restaurant. Howie found him here. Nye, I mean.” Brian was mumbling unintelligibly. Conan asked, “Did you say Howie Bliss found him?”

  “Yes. He was…the body was in the walk-in.”

  “The what?”

  “The freezer. Damn, what a hell of a way—somebody shut him in there; hit him on the head and left him there to…to freeze to death.”

  Conan felt the muscles around his mouth tighten; he crushed out his cigarette with hard jabs.

  “You can tell Kleber I’m on my way.”

  Chapter 3

  “The morning was a gift of spring all the more generous because it was premature. Conan drove south on Highway 101 with the windows down, the heady wind tingling against his face, but the glory of the day stung in some obscure sense, as if it were a personal affront, a gaucherie comparable to laughter at a funeral.

  Being a rational and educated man, he recognized the magnificent indifference of natural forces to the triumphs and tragedies of humankind. Still, at times the veneer of rationality cracked, and as he sped to the site of death, he could only regard the shining day with irrational resentment. The occasion demanded gray rain.

  But he came by such unreasonable lapses reasonably enough. He was born on a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon, a semidesert land in which survival was literally dependent on the whims of nature. A drought could sear the pastures into blowing dust flats devoid of sustenance. A badger hole could cripple a horse and leave a man stranded miles from help or water. A lightning-ignited range fire could raze crops, herds, homes, and hopes in a matter of minutes. And in a high desert blizzard, the temperature could drop to forty below and cattle could freeze on their feet.

  One of Conan’s clearest childhood memories was of a winter night when he was thirteen. He stood at the open door of the old house at the Ten-Mile Ranch, shivering in the agonizing blast of blizzard wind, and stared out at his father on the porch only a few feet away but nearly invisible in flailing curtains of snow.

  Henry Flagg faced that keening white oblivion with both hands raised, convulsed into fists, and howled curses into the storm.

  He would not curse his God, but he cursed the icy wind that had torn down the power lines; he cursed the cold that even the sturdy walls of this stone-cased house couldn’t rebuff; he cursed the mountainous drifts that lay siege to his keep, that no vehicle, no horse, no man, could break through; he cursed his human impotence against that vast omnipotence while his wife and younger son lay dying of pneumonia, and the nearest doctor was thirty miles away in infinity.

  Henry Flagg dealt with the forces of nature on a highly personal basis, and now, when the skies laughed in the face of a human tragedy, Conan discovered that he hadn’t, after all, interred that with his father’s bones.

  He roused himself in time to turn right at a junction where a billboard urged him to. The Surf House Resort, a hundred motel units, two swimming pools, sauna, tennis courts, beauty salon, gift boutique, and easy beach access. Plus Tally’s Surf House Restaurant and Tides Room Lounge.

  Within a distance of two blocks, he went from one axis of Holliday Beach’s existence, the Coast Highway, to the other, the beachfront. When he reached Front Street, he crossed onto a field of asphalt around which the resort complex clustered, forever celebrating and waiting for summer.

  The restaurant was west of the parking area and beyond the outdoor pool. The sun made glowing jewels of the lights atop the three police cars, two marked with the insignia of the Holliday Beach police, the other with the star of the county sheriff. The crowd of resort employees and townspeople was small, which meant the cars had been here for some time; curiosity had given way to boredom.

  Conan roused a stir of interest as he passed between the cars, exchanging greetings with the onlookers he knew. He felt their stares at his back as he traversed the covered walk beside the swimming pool to the glass doors bearing the legend, “Welcome to Tally’s Surf House Restaurant.”

  It was a little difficult to read at the moment. Standing in front of it was a young man of formidable height and breadth, wearing a blue uniform with a .38 holstered in black leather at his side.

  Conan nodded, returning his smile.

  “Hello, Billy.”

  Sergeant William Todd opened the door for him, taking no offense at that familiar greeting; he had been a Holliday Beach Bookshop habitué since he was old enough to read.

  “Chief Kleber’s waiting for you, Mr. Flagg.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  Sergeant Todd restrained a smile. “Good luck.”

  Another policeman was posted ten feet down the hall where a narrow passage opened to the left. Along that passage were the restrooms, a phone booth, and at the end of it, a door opening into the kitchen. That explained the guard; the freezer was beyond that door.

  Another ten feet down the entry hall, the opaque glass screen on the right angled out, making the entrance to the bar, and a few feet farther, the hall ended in five slate steps descending into the dining room, a spacious room with a warm, lush atmosphere enhanced by banks and hanging pots of Boston fern. The west wall was a curving panorama, its windows framing an unspoiled span of beach, surf, and sky.

  Conan looked to his left where there was another opening into the kitchen. A second police guard was posted there. The other occupants of the room were seated by the windows in a numb tableau presided over by Chief Earl Kleber in his blue uniform and Sheriff Gifford Wills in brown.

  Brian was slumped at a table across from Tilda Capek, his head cradled in his hands, while Tilda watched him silently, one hand resting on the table near him. Beryl Randall sat at the next table to the left, and the sunlight wasn’t kind to her, betraying the artificial consistency of hue in her reddish hair, the lined irregularity of her scarlet mouth, the harsh curves of overdrawn brows behind the rhinestoned glasses. It also betrayed, when she looked at Brian, the anxious bewilderment in her eyes.

  Claude Jastrow sat across the table from her, his attention fixed on the contemporary chandelier in the center of the ceiling. There was something oddly self-conscious in his posture and the studied cant of his head; something also evident in the perfectly matched pants and sweater combination, both des
igned to play up a slender, but well-proportioned body, and stylishly accented with jewelry at the neck. He wore his brown hair long, brushed straight back, calling attention to a high forehead that was the best feature of a face otherwise notable only for exceptionally fluent eyebrows, which he used to maximum dramatic advantage.

  Conan wondered if Jastrow chose to sit so near Howie Bliss with that same self-awareness. They had in common their profession, but it was obvious, even without tasting their respective wares, that Claude Jastrow was a chef, while Howie Bliss would never be more than a cook.

  At the moment, it seemed unlikely that Bliss could manage a hard-boiled egg. He looked as if he’d been deposited in the chair like a sack of potatoes, the front of his white jacket gapping in zigzags, his round face gray, mouth slack, bloodshot eyes shifting from Kleber to Sheriff Wills in resentful alarm, although their attention was turned elsewhere.

  Part of Bliss’s problem was undoubtedly shock—he had found the body—but it could also be attributed simply to hangover, and in that he wasn’t alone. Across the table from him was another hard-hit victim.

  Conny Van Roon’s costume hadn’t changed since last night except that it was rumpled as if he’d slept in it, and the plaid jacket seemed to have stretched, or he had shrunk within it. Perhaps he had combed his thin, dark hair, but he hadn’t shaved. Obviously, he needed the coffee beside him on the table, but he only slumped bonelessly, staring down at his limp hands as if he was wondering how they worked.

  Van Roon was oblivious even to Kleber, who was standing near him but occupied at the moment with Max Heinz. Kleber, notebook in hand, had Max thoroughly intimidated, which Conan found both unexpected and surprising. Life behind a bar had inured Max to human folly, and he usually dealt with it with capable tolerance, but he seemed out of his depth now and looked as sick as Van Roon or Bliss, although the only physical reason could be lack of sleep; Max never drank.

  Now he threw up both hands helplessly.