The sun had started its slant to the west, and the heat of it burned in the car. I blinked against the shine, driving steady except for a sandwich-and-drink stop. I could begin to see the mountains, shapes of blue mist straight ahead. We would be home, I figured, somewhere around nine o’clock.
The miles went by, marked by the idle bits of talk, and a fire lit itself in the west, and by and by we dropped down from the bench to the valley, not soon enough, quite, to be home before dark.
“Just let me off anywhere,” Mike Day said. “I’ll make out.”
I left him and his bag and his briefcase in front of the Jackson Hotel. Before he took leave, he thanked me and Mrs. Conner warmly, though it would have taken more than warm thanks to thaw her. Then I drove her to her house and said my own thanks regardless that she was on a per diem. She dropped her rock by the sidewalk.
After I parked the beat-up car in the rear of the courthouse, I made for the sheriff’s office, from which shone the only light in the building. Halvor was seated in the sheriff’s chair with his feet on the desk and his hands on a picture magazine. He said, “Hello, Sherlock.”
“Hello yourself. Know where I can find Mr. Charleston?”
“Yep. Gone to the city. Gone to the city on business is what he said.” Halvor grinned. “That’s what he said, but I just happened to notice, lookin’ out the window, that he had a dame with him.”
“Who?”
“Search me, but she was a dish, a real honest-to-God dish.”
I left. I would report tomorrow, after feeding Mrs. Jenkins’ damn chickens.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was noon the next day before I got up, a fact that I blamed on my mother, who usually routed me out if I slept through the alarm. She answered to my complaint by saying a growing boy needed his sleep, especially after a hard day, and a lamb chop and a couple of eggs would promote health and soothe temper.
The mention of eggs was a reminder, so I asked her to hold up while I saw to Mrs. Jenkins’ chickens, which were just a hop-skip away and probably weren’t hopping or skipping, times being so hard. At this noon hour the sheriff’s office could wait.
The chickens were all right, or anyhow live enough to appreciate feed and water.
It was five minutes past one when I walked into the sheriff’s office. Jimmy Collins motioned toward the little-used room that was private when the door was closed. “He’s waitin’,” he said, “and he’s done seen the wreck you dragged in. Like a kid, you ran into a daydream, I reckon.”
Instead of answering, I knocked at the door, and Charleston’s voice told me to enter.
He wasn’t alone. In one of the four chairs near the desk sat a stringy character he introduced as Gus Gewald, who greeted me shortly in a voice that put me in mind of a hacksaw on the push.
“Mr. Gewald is a state criminal investigator,” Charleston said, “and he’s here to help us unravel our mystery.” He spoke in a tone of easy tolerance, which still had a barb in it like the point of a fishhook inside a worm. “How’d you make out yesterday, Jase?”
Gewald hitched back in his chair, impatient at interruption, I supposed.
“All right except for the car. Jimmy said you’d already seen it.” I handed Charleston the two hundred dollars, saying, “Here’s to pay for the wreck. I couldn’t help—”
Charleston waved explanations away.
“And here’s what’s left of expense money,” I went on and gave him ten dollars plus twenty cents. “I’ll make out a report.”
“In time, Jase. In time.”
“So now can the two of us get back to work?” Gewald rasped out, hunching forward.
“The three of us,” Charleston answered.
Gewald sized me up, or rather down, like a bartender wondering was I old enough for a beer. “Pretty much of a pup,” he said, turning to Charleston.
“He’s got a good nose,” Charleston answered. “Besides, he’s my pup.”
“Have it your own way. It’s not mine. Back to business, then.”
“You have the full report,” Charleston told him. “All that we know, Jase and I.”
“But none of your theories. No suspicions. No hunches.”
“I wouldn’t want to mislead a state criminal investigator.”
“You can cut out the sarcasm. I was sent here.”
“Not by my request, Mr. Gewald.”
“No. But you weren’t getting anywhere, not anywhere. The attorney general thought it was time a trained man took a hand.”
“Take it, then.” The words were sharp but came out smooth. “Let us know when and if we can help.”
“There are, you know, quite a number of possibilities,” Gewald said, as if it were beyond our power to think of a one. His voice seemed to get softer the more he sawed with it. “Assume, for instance, that Buster Hogue, now dead, was rolling Mrs. Day on the sly.”
“I got a very balky imagination there,” Charleston answered.
“Nevertheless, assume it. Buster Hogue was a single man, a long-time widower, and stranger things happen.”
Here, I thought to myself, the state criminal investigator had jumped the reservation and faded from sight. Buster Hogue had been fifty or more, older by perhaps fifteen years than Chick Charleston himself. And Mrs. Day? No—squared, trebled and multiplied to infinity.
“Take assignations for granted, take them for discovered,” Gewald continued, “it would be in the nature of Ben Day, then, to murder Hogue. Right?”
“Maybe,” Charleston replied. “He wasn’t what you could call an ever-lovin’ husband, though.”
“But to proceed. If he did, and one of the Hogue boys knew or even suspected? Well, there you would be.”
Charleston said, “Sure enough.”
“All right. Unlikely. I’ll switch to the Hogue brothers. It’s altogether possible, as I see it, that that dumb one, Simp, pot shot his father.”
Nodding, Charleston said, “Possible.”
“The psychiatrist so stated, even if somewhat reluctantly. Then couldn’t Simp have gone after Day, too?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Old animosity stemming from that Forest Service mix-up. Threat of exposure perhaps. And if not Simp, what about Junior, his brother, who’s so protective of him? Put it this way: Simp shoots his father, Day knows it or gets wind of it, one way or another Junior finds out that Day’s wise to the fact and so shuts him up with a bullet. The big-brother act. Or it could be that Junior himself did away with both men, killing Day after shooting his father because Day knew too damn much.”
“You sure run the scale. I don’t know why either Hogue boy would shoot his old man.”
“Simp could have some looney reason.”
“Yep. And Junior inherits.” Charleston was shaking his head slowly, saying no to himself more than to us. “It has been bothersome.”
“And still is.” Gewald’s stringy frame came forward with his words. “Look. I want to talk to those boys. I want to talk to that professor who says he had his gun stolen. I want to talk to everyone who had trouble with Hogue. Hell, there are motives all over the place, for one murder or the other and the two combined, no matter if there’s one killer or two. And I want to talk to Mrs. Ben Day. By your report she took the news of Ben’s death very cool. Her husband dead, and her like an oyster. That jells with the business of assignation. Right?”
“She might still be in town,” Charleston told Gewald. “This morning she testified at the inquest you missed.”
I put in, “Inquest? Already? What was brought out, Mr. Charleston?”
He gave me a half-smile with humor behind it, said, “Person or persons unknown,” went to the door and, opening it, called out, “Jimmy! See if you can round up Mrs. Ben Day somewhere in town and ask her if she won’t please come to the office.”
While we waited I made my report of the trip. Gewald sat back, resting his hacksaw for other metal.
“Patrolman Tom Stevenson asked me to give you hello
,” I told Charleston. “Also he decided the wreck wasn’t my fault.”
“Not surprising to me, Jase. Now about this Mike Day?”
“He wants to get his claim in, like I said, and I bet he’s aiming to get himself named administrator of Ben’s estate.”
“Another Day another dollar, huh? Where’s he from?”
“He didn’t say. Roundabout, I guess. I took note of his license number. Minnesota plates.”
Now Gewald interrupted, his voice sharp again. “He’s not known around here? Not seen by anybody?”
“Seen by me and Mrs. Collins,” I answered, feeling I was in tune with the sheriff. “And probably his brother Ben knew him. He said he did.”
To me he said, “Nuts,” and to Charleston, “Are you and your boy through?” “Boy” meant punk.
“For now, I reckon.”
“I’ve got wheels, of course, to take me around to these people, but I’ll need someone with me who knows the lay of the land.”
“Sure. No trouble.”
“Right now it’s only interrogations that hold any promise. The evidence is damn scanty—one spent cartridge casing and a flattened bullet dug out of a corpse that appears to be the same caliber. No casts of tire prints. No fingerprints. No nothing else.”
“Nary thing, Mr. Gewald. Nary thing.”
What Gewald might have said wasn’t said because Jimmy knocked at the door and showed Mrs. Day in. With her, not to my lasting surprise, was Mike Day. He wore a dark business suit, as befitted grief, and a sunrise necktie, as didn’t. Mrs. Day had on a black outfit that had been new once and maybe stylish. Her face was blank, as if troubles rubbed on troubles had erased all feeling. And yet it struck me, struck me for the first time, that decent clothes and an injection of cheer would make her a good-looking woman.
Standing behind his desk, Charleston introduced Mrs. Day to Gewald, who rose half out of his chair. “And you,” he continued, “must be Mike Day. Jase has told me about you.”
“Yes, sir,” Day answered with his salesman’s confidence. “We met, though under unfortunate circumstances, occasioned, I must admit, by yours truly. I have made ample restitution, I hope.” He went on, “You know poor Ben is, or was, my brother. I thought—I hoped—that it would be quite all right with you if I accompanied Marcy Belle here.”
“Sit down, you and Mrs. Day,” Charleston said.
Gewald held them up. “You’re not an attorney.” The words were more charge than question.
“No, sir. Indeed not. Just a relative and friend. I might add, however, that in earlier years I served as police judge. Two terms. Naturally I know something of law.”
Charleston got the two visitors to sit down. Gewald didn’t look pleased. Seated himself, Charleston opened the wide drawer of his desk, fumbled around and came out with one of his special cigars, which he didn’t light.
“Mrs. Day,” Gewald said, easing off on his saw, “you know I am here as a representative of the state. We want to find out who killed your husband and hope to advance toward a solution by getting your answers to some questions. Of course, you want to know, too.”
“May I intrude?” Mike Day asked, not really asking. “Marcy Belle, you don’t have to answer any questions. You may stay mute. Under the law a suspect may not be forced to incriminate himself.”
Now Gewald employed his saw. “Who says she’s a suspect? This is informal. No notes. No reporter.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gewald,” Day said, his big pie face split in a smile. “I am sure, sir, that you merely overlooked the customary precautionary statements antecedent to interrogation. Not that Marcy Belle has anything to conceal. I was merely making sure, for your sake, that procedure be proper.”
Looking at him, looking at that large, whiskey-blushed, four-flusher’s face, I felt an uneasy surge of liking for him, a surge not lessened by Gewald’s expression. He was putting on a show, Day was. He was showing up Gewald. And he wasn’t hurting himself with Marcy Belle. Charleston was leaning back, by aspect satisfied.
“All right. All right,” Gewald rasped. “Consider made the statements of your rights under the law, Mrs. Day. Now, to get down to business, it has been remarked that your reaction to your husband’s murder was cool, was indifferent. That’s putting it mildly. What do you have to say about that?”
“A loaded and leading question,” Mike Day interrupted. “Answer him if you wish, Marcy Belle.”
She asked, “What?”
Gewald tried again. “The inference is, from your attitude, that you and he were at odds and hence that his death left you undisturbed. Now I ask you what you held against him.”
“Say it again.”
“You held something against him, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t there. I didn’t hold nothin’.”
“I don’t mean anything physical, nothing that you could hold in your hand.” Exasperation was putting a harder edge on the saw. “What did you hold against him in your mind?”
“What every woman does.”
“Every woman? Every one of his women? Did he have so many then?”
“How would I know?”
Gewald sighed, but exasperation clawed his face. “Look. Try to answer me. You said every woman. What do you mean by that?”
“Every woman that’s a wife, that’s what I mean.” The words came live from the blank face and for an instant stood before me like truth chiseled in stone.
“Oh, you are saying that the lot of the wife—all wives—is unequal and burdensome?”
“Is that what I said?”
Mike Day broke in, smiling wide. “Sir, can you couch your questions in simpler language? Mrs. Day doesn’t comprehend your polysyllabicisms.”
Gewald tightened his mouth, looking at no one. I figured he was counting syllables himself. Then he said, “So be it. Mrs. Day, did your husband abuse you, mistreat you, maltreat you?”
She looked at Mike Day, who translated, “Did he beat you up?”
“What if he did?”
“It would give you a motive for removing him from the scene.”
“He removed hisself by hisself from the scene, night or day, work or not, it didn’t matter. I didn’t have nothin’ to say about that. He just went.”
Was there, I wondered, some sly, some native and hidden intelligence behind her answers. No one could be that dumb. Yes? No? She began to be the second person I didn’t quite want to admire but still did.
Gewald, the trained man, representative of the state, looked as if the quality of patience had had the hell strained out of it.
“Down to cases,” he said, sawing hard. “Did you kill your husband?”
“I’m glad you’re not a suspect, Marcy Belle,” Day put in pleasantly.
“Did you kill your husband?”
“Me? Kill him? Mister, I’m lucky to be here myself, havin’ him for a husband.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Not so’s you could notice.”
“Did you?”
“I said no. How many times I got to say it?”
Came a pause, and I glanced around. Mike Day sat back, his arms folded over his heavy chest, his appearance suggesting what I would call large satisfaction. Knowing Charleston so well, I could tell he was amused.
Gewald returned to the attack, using what I supposed he thought was soft persuasion. “All right, Mrs. Day. Thank you. Now I must go on to a delicate subject.”
She just looked at him, her mouth slack. I could see her tongue fiddling with her lower teeth, which were good barring a vacancy a fist might have left.
“You knew Buster Hogue?”
“Sure.”
“How well did you know him?”
“Well enough, I guess.”
“Well enough that your relations were intimate?”
“Even after him and Ben had their trouble, I always spoke to him nice and he answered nice.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to get at, and you know it. Assignations. Did you and he
arrange assignations?”
She looked for help to Mike Day, who didn’t help her unless his smile was a help.
“Assignations?” she asked.
“Yes. Assignations! Trysts! Lovers’ meetings!” Gewald jerked to his feet and poked an outraged finger at her. “Goddammit, in plain words, woman, were you screwing him?”
“That’s enough, Gewald,” Charleston said in a voice not loud but carrying. His words didn’t surprise me. They just made conscious my unconscious recognition that in him was a lot of the old western gentleman.
His order was wasted.
“Oh, screw!” Mrs. Day answered as if in sudden recognition. She began laughing, laughing a laugh that hit me as sad and low-order and yet somehow pitifully fetching. “Me and Mr. Buster Hogue screwing! You got a mind, man, you have. I never had a chance even if he’d ast me.” She sobered abruptly, and the old look of no hope settled back on her face. “Me with kids and never off the place and not a dime for so much as a new rag. Screw you, too, mister.”
Gewald was looking at the floor for more questions, if any.
“Speakin’ of kids,” Mrs. Day said, “I gotta see about mine. I left ’em with a friend, and they’ll likely be raisin’ hell now if not sooner.”
She got up, not to Gewald’s objection, and went to the door. He didn’t have the grace to thank her, much less to apologize. Mike Day followed her, ushered her out and, before closing the door, said to all, “Her innocence is surely evident to you gentlemen. That being settled, tell me, Sheriff Charleston, are the judge’s chambers upstairs?”
Gewald sat for a minute or two after they’d left, then got up, said, “I’ll nose around,” and went out the door.
Charleston lighted the cigar he’d been holding so long. “Jase,” he said, breathing smoke, “a man ought to have to ante up for a show like we’ve seen.”
“I kind of like that Mike Day, and Mrs. Day was great in her part.”
He smiled and answered, “Sure. Good cast. Confidence man and the poor moron.”
“And Gewald?”
“The trained investigator.” He blew out a plume of smoke and added, “Trained in a crocodile school, I reckon.”
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