If A Body

by George Worthing Yates

  In other circumstances, the domestic difficulties of a criminal expert could be discounted, their effect on the outcome of a case ignored as slight. However, it was what Katheren didn’t know that led to the final useless catastrophe, the horrible bloodletting in the wastes of a California desert.

  What she didn’t know was the content of a telegram in George’s pocket:

  GEORGE BRENDAN

  HOTEL MUHLEBACH

  KANSAS CITY, MO.

  PERSONALLY ASSURE YOU I AM NOT EN ROUTE IN LAGONDA. IF LEFTY RESPONSIBLE HAVE HIM TELEPHONE ME SANTA BARBARA TWELVE NOON SUNDAY. ACCEPTING NO LIABILITY FOR HIS COMMITMENTS.

  MILTON SMALNICK

  2

  In Kansas, the paved road is called “the slab.”

  From the slab, eastern Kansas looked like a new country to the three in the Buick. The wind felt sharper, hotter to them. The houses and the towns seemed to rise starkly from the fields, without belonging to the land or being comfortable in it.

  The lanes that cut off at right angles from the slab were rutty open wounds in the earth. The other cars they passed had an unfamiliar look; no longer sleekly polished and urbane, but stained with mud and battered from hard work.

  It was the edge of the West.

  Beyond Tonganoxie, Katheren was moved to inquire:

  “George, are we getting a flat tire?”

  “Don’t let your fancy run away with you.”

  “Nevertheless, do you mind looking?”

  Woar craned his neck out and reported, “We are. Carry on to a filling station if you can.”

  At a bend in the road, beneath a clump of cottonwoods on the shoulder of a knoll, stood a ramshackle unpainted house with a gasoline pump standing before its door.

  A lean youth, solemnly chewing and regarding them with apathy, unfolded his brown fore-arms and came to the side of the car.

  “Can you fix a tire for us?”

  He nodded glumly. They got out and trouped into the house, where an incredibly old and gnarled version of the young man outside stirred himself from a plush rocking chair and sold them bottled soda and a box of fig newtons.

  “Come from East?”

  “Were from N’Yawk,” said Cicely in that peculiar lofty insolence that city people trot out for the yokelry.

  “Come through rain?”

  “Not a drop,” said Katheren.

  “Goin’ West?”

  “We’d like to make Dodge City tonight,” Woar told him.

  The old man screwed his lips tight to hold down his false teeth, and let himself laugh merrily.

  “Ain’t figurin’ on cuttin’ down from Topeka to Emporia, be you? ‘Cause if you be, you better trade that big car o’ yours for a rowboat. Ha!”

  This made the proper impression. The three strangers stopped munching on their crackers and gave him all their attention, so he told them:

  “Plenty o’ weather down southwest lately. Havin’ trouble with the Osage and the Neosho. Maybe you can get through, maybe not. None o’ my business, son, but you’re sure crazy if you try.”

  Woar noticed the bit of a pipe projecting from a pocket of the old man’s blue denim jacket. He tactfully offered his pouch. After some sniffing and squinting at the tobacco in it, the civility was accepted with gratitude. Only after matches had been struck did Woar ask, “What can we do to reach Dodge City tonight? It’s rather important to us.”

  “Son, I lived sixty-five years in Kansas, and I ain’t been to Dodge City once. St. Joseph’s my home. Missouri born, I am. Ask the boy about Dodge City, he’s got itchin’ feet like everybody today. World’s gone crazy!...

  “I’m a lot older’n most people, so I’m tellin’ you somethin’ free. Goin’ West, are you? Important, is it?

  Maybe, maybe not. What I’m tellin’ you is, give her leather, son! More rain’s acomin’, rivers’ll be swellin’ up fast, west country’s due for God’s awfullest duckin’ in many a year. How’d I know? Got it in my bones, that’s how. The boy says I’m an old man, I don’t shut my mouth tight enough to hold. Maybe, maybe not. He can think so, you can think so too. But if I was you, son, an’ I was goin’ West, I’d get goin’ quick, and I’d go, an’ I’d go, an’ I’d go...”

  He clacked his teeth prophetically and rocked in his plush chair.

  Cicely, unimpressed, said, “Let’s ask him if he does any palm reading.”

  Woar went out to look at the sky. There were no clouds in it. The sun shone bright and hot.

  The lean youth was lifting the wheel into place on the lug bolts. He saw Woar and explained, “Rim cut. Patched it up so she’ll hold now.”

  “Good. How’s the road to Ottawa?”

  “Bridge out. Want to get on Fifty-South?”

  “Yes.”

  “Topeka, take Kansas Four and Eleven down to Emporia. Good road all the way.”

  “No bridges out?”

  “No. Rained over that way, but the radio says it’s O. K. now. Don’t get down off the slab and you’re all right.”

  Woar paid for the tire repair. He took the wheel as they drove on again.

  “Let’s turn on the radio,” he suggested to Katheren.

  “Music, stock market reports or Amos and Andy?” she asked as the loudspeaker began spitting static at them, and the tubes warmed up.

  “Weather,” said Woar.

  Cicely was derisive: “You ain’t taking old grand-pappy’s patter to heart, are you?”

  The radio said fair tonight and tomorrow for eastern Kansas, light showers in the west. No change in temperature.

  When they reached Lawrence, the sky had clouded and the wind blew hard and cold.

  Half way to Big Springs, they met approaching cars with windshield wipers still working. Then the road turned black beneath them, and rain pelted down on their heads.

  They stopped in a small abandoned churchyard to put up the top. Katheren, Cicely and Caligula took shelter on the porch while Woar, with water trickling under the collar of his mackintosh, made the convertible tight.

  The radio was not impressed. In its cheerfullest voice it cajoled them to take to the open road.

  “Another weekend of glorious Indian summer is upon us, and with it the old question of where to turn the wheels of the family car. Folks, the answer is waiting for you. Petrolene Products has prepared a folder for you. Why not pick it up today at your neighborhood Petrolene Service Station and plan to visit...”

  3

  It was the purest coincidence that led Hilda to the Jayhawk in Topeka, Kansas. The Gouchard Guide for Kansas and Missouri happened to be vintage 1932. The Topeka By-Pass had yet to be built when that was compiled, and Katheren knew nothing of Highway Number Ten, which would have saved them fifteen minutes and much city traffic.

  They sloshed through the outskirts of Topeka, therefore, and George asked, “Hungry?”

  Cicely said, “Oh, deah me, no! We often diet for weeks on fig newtons, we do!”

  “Where to stop?”

  Katheren said that Gouchard’s recommended Hotel Jayhawk, with Coffee Shop in conjunction.

  The Coffee Shop had an air of primeval peace; the somnolent tranquility of lunch forgotten, dinner not yet a disturbing prospect, and waitresses dozing contentedly at their posts. The rain outside was a soft veil to temper the intrusive world. Cicely’s hoarse whisper echoed through the hush, and the cashier raised her eyebrows like an outraged librarian.

  “Look!”

  A man at a far table—the only other diner in the place—raised his eyebrows also, and put down the newspaper he was reading, accidentally revealing a pint flask of Bourbon that had been concealed by it.

  He was Milton Smalnick.

  He stared at them in vast disinterest, made no acknowledgment of acquaintance, and returned to his whisky, sandwich, and newspaper.

  “You could knock me over with a feather,” said Cicely. “Can you imagine?”

  Cicely’s unmarried status was another development that Katheren didn’t know.

  “
You’ll go on from here with your husband, I suppose?”

  “With him? Well, I might at that. Rahther the thing to do, I guess, isn’t it?”

  George, who had fallen behind in the lobby, caught up with them. He had a map in his hand, and a wry smile of satisfaction on his face. It must have been a guilty smile, for he wiped it off. He ordered a club sandwich in a remote, preoccupied voice.

  Smalnick, she supposed, was the mouse at the bottom of George’s Cheshire Cat manifestations. She was right. He excused himself, crossed to Smalnick’s table and leaned over him for a brief consultation, most of which was inaudible.

  “See me in my room in a little while,” she heard Smalnick say in a thick voice.

  “As you like,” said Woar, and returned to his own table. Smalnick in a few minutes swallowed down his whisky, paid the cashier, and went out.

  When, in a few more minutes, Cicely rose and elegantly went out after him, Woar wrinkled his nose.

  “Milton is drunk as a lord. I wish her luck!”

  Katheren said, “Before she comes back again, do you mind telling me what I’m getting into?”

  “The Kansas River is rising. The Sunflower Auto Club doesn’t know what to expect in the hills south of here. Floods are reported along the Republican River and the Colorado, with a record rainfall of seven inches in the last—”

  “Never mind,” said Katheren.

  She smoked in exasperation. He ate his sandwich.

  He had almost finished it when Cicely strolled into the Coffee Shop again. The set of her lips expressed disillusion and lofty disdain. Without saying anything, she sat down and daintily resumed her lunch.

  “Did you see your husband?”

  “We didn’t connect,” admitted Cicely, but with implications that the whole subject was distasteful.

  “Did you call his room? That’s where he went.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  Woar swallowed the last corner of toast. He leaned forward in something resembling a show of alarm: “He isn’t in his room?”

  “That guy checked out,” said Cicely bitterly, “as soon as he finished his lunch. The way he was moving, he’s a couple of miles out of town by now.”

  Woar jumped and ran for the lobby...

  Eleven

  MR. MILTON SMALNICK, barely able to navigate, had left the Jay hawk, load, luggage and car. Since Kansas is a dry state, his going was anything but inconspicuous.

  When last seen by an embittered porter whom he had neglected to tip, Smalnick’s direction was west, toward Gage Boulevard.

  Gage might lead north to Highway Forty, Manhattan and Salina; or to State Highway Four and another way to Salina; or to add to the confusion, to State Highway Ten and a place called Alma.

  George told the two women, “Whether you like it or not, I’m going after Smalnick. Do you prefer to stay here?”

  “No,” said Katheren.

  “Gahd no!” said Cicely.

  He shoved Katheren, Cicely and Caligula into the car.

  “‘After Smalnick’ is somewhat vague,” Katheren pointed out. “Where in particular, if I may ask?”

  “To Gage Boulevard. After that, the devil take the hindmost.”

  Gage Boulevard on a very rainy afternoon, and Gage Park in particular, was an unreal landscape dashed off by a painter with only gray on his palette and no skill for the human figure. A few cars sloshed by, at high speed and wrapped in clouds of flying spray.

  Woar turned right till he came to a filling station where he could inquire.

  “Have you seen a Lagonda pass this way?”

  “A what, mister?”

  Moments were lost in a description of the lines of a Lagonda, and more in an abortive discussion (on the part of the filling station attendant) of foreign cars in general. But the Lagonda probably had not passed. Woar put about and chose Highway Four.

  At a sudden turning they came to another filling station. There, by a dazzling stroke of luck, the Lagonda had stopped for gas and advice about the road to Emporia.

  “Not maybe more than five minutes ago. Well, maybe ten. Anyhow, he wasn’t wastin’ any time...”

  Nor was Woar.

  He drove the seventy-odd miles to Emporia in slightly less than two hours; considering the weather and the state of the roads, not bad time at all.

  He lost half an hour in Emporia making sure Smalnick had passed that way. In the end, nothing was sure, except that only a madman would have continued south on Highway Eleven, which left Fifty westward as Smalnick’s only choice.

  Not that Smalnick might not be mad.

  So, drawn on the end of a tenuous thread of reasoning, Woar headed the Buick for Newton and Hutchinson. Darkness fell, early and sudden. Rain pounded viciously on the windshield. Light from the headlamps seemed to be blotted up by the storm before it lit the road ahead. Cicely huddled in her corner, resenting the discomfort with a whole heart.

  The radio, always opportune, warned them, “The storm that for the last three days swept eastern Colorado is now making itself felt over Kansas. Present rains in addition to regional disturbances have swollen some rivers, particularly the Kansas and the Cottonwood. According to latest information, State Highway Eleven is closed to traffic south of Emporia and is not advisable between Admire and Eskridge...”

  “Didn’t we just come that way?” asked Katheren. “We did,” said Woar. “Listen.”

  “...though the new section west of Strong City is expected to hold. In other states, the Republican River is rising rapidly and many sections of Colorado are isolated due to floods. In California, the movie stars of Hollywood sweltered today in a record-breaking heat wave that reached one hundred and two degrees...”

  “Poor creatures,” said Katheren, and groped on the dial for music.

  “Got anything against them?” demanded Cicely suddenly. She was rather like the dormouse. She slept mostly, but roused herself now and then to make querulous remarks.

  Katheren told her to go to sleep.

  “I ain’t sleepy in the least. What’s the idea, chasing Milton all over the country? All right, I shouldn’t ask questions. Only don’t you think I ain’t aware what’s going on...”

  She made a few huffy noises into her fox fur and dropped off to sleep again.

  Katheren asked, “Where is the Republican River?”

  “North, I think. A tributary of the Kansas.”

  “And the Cottonwood?”

  “On our left. Somewhere in the dark, not far off.”

  “I hope it knows its place.”

  Having little else to do, Katheren studied her husband’s face in the faint upward glow from the instruments. His cheeks were drawn, his mouth tight and purposeful, and his eyes squinty, almost haggard, from the strain of driving. So she asked him:

  “Do you get any pleasure out of this?”

  “Do I? I hardly think so. I don’t know.”

  “You’re completely absorbed in it. You couldn’t think of anything but the murderer and tracking him down if you tried, could you?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I don’t know. I’m only your wife. I’m discussing this objectively, you understand?”

  “Quite.”

  “I’m adjusting myself to the facts.”

  “Good.”

  “Detecting seems to take a lot more of a husband than banking or bookkeeping. Not that I’ve ever had experience with a bookkeeper. I merely use that as an instance.”

  “Ah.”

  “When you say ‘Ah,’ you’re very remote. I thought when I married you I’d find you less remote. Sorry, George, but I don’t.”

  “Dash it all, Katheren, you—”

  “Let me say it. We’re well on the way to a misunderstanding and a separation. Of course, you think you’re in the right. I also think I’m in the right. People always do. Let’s disregard personal feelings, though, and get down to the basic cause of contention. You know what it is, don’t you?”

  “Rex Shanley?”r />
  “More than that. Your profession. I met you because you happened to be a detective and if I leave you, it will be because you happen to be a detective. Now, to be sensible and logical about it, why don’t we agree to remove the cause? Why be a detective, George? You’ll answer that you’ve been trained that way and your heart’s in it and so on. Well, I say to that, your heart ought to belong not to crime but to me.”

  “In other words, choose between you and crime?”

  “More or less. Take your time about it, though. You’re rather angry now.”

  “Who the devil wouldn’t be, Katheren? If you don’t like the kind of man I am, you shouldn’t have married me. I’m sorry, but my sense of humor doesn’t seem to be working very well this evening.”

  “I noticed.”

  “If you regret having married me, that’s all there is to it.”

  “Not quite, George. I set out to be your wife. I hate to admit failure.”

  “Damn you, Katheren!”

  “Men are impossible to reason with. Too much self-esteem and too little willingness to face cold facts. Because I put our relations on a practical, unemotional basis, you immediately want to throttle me. That isn’t exactly the spirit of enlightened discussion, so let’s drop the matter for now, shall we?”

  “Quite.”

  Just to show there were no hard feelings, she reached his pipe out of his pocket, filled it, and helped him with a light.

  2

  At Strong City, which was not a city by any extension of the word, they were confronted with shuddering red lanterns and a sign:

  BRIDGE OUT

  DETOUR

  An arrow pointed left.

  They couldn’t help themselves. They were forced to get down off the slab.

  The road, however muddy, seemed direct and well-intended. It led them south through what appeared to be rolling country. Overhead an occasional ghostly tree loomed in the lights of the car, then silently vanished behind them. Woar slowed the car to forty, then thirty.

  “This surface,” he explained, “is suitable for skiing.”

  They passed through Cottonwood Falls, slightly more metropolitan than Strong City. The detour signs pointed farther south.