Nightshades (Nameless Detective) (11 page)

There was rain at Musket Creek too, but it wasn’t as heavy, and little jigsaw patterns of blue were visible here and there among the clouds. The lightning and all but dim echoes of the thunder had stayed over near Redding. In the dreary light, the little valley and its collection of relics and anomalies had a desolate, forgotten look, like a vision of something out of the past—something small and insignificant, something doomed.

The road was muddy from the rain; I had had to drive at twenty all the way in from Highway 299, and had to crawl at an even slower pace down the steep hillside into town. Lights burned in Coleclaw’s mercantile, in Ella Bloom’s cottage up on the hillock—pale blobs against the wet gray afternoon—but nobody was out and around that I could see. I drove in among the ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch. My imagination made them into crouching things, battered and weary old shades with blind eyes and signboards for mouths, waiting for night to fall. The things they’d seen, the things they knew . . . just the thought of it put a small, cold ruffling on the back of my scalp, as if somebody had blown his breath across it.

I saw no one among the buildings either, and no one on the way up the far slope and into the woods. The shadows were thick here; it might have been twilight. The rain made hollow dripping noises in the trees, glistened and writhed like silverfish in my headlight beams.

Paul Robideaux’s cabin was just that—a country cabin made out of notched logs, with a peaked roof to keep the snow from piling up during the winter. Both front windows showed light. Down in front, just off the road, was the jeep Robideaux had been driving yesterday. It was alone there, until I put my car alongside it and gave it some company.

Robideaux must have heard the sound of my car’s engine; the front door opened just as I reached the porch and he stood there glowering at me. The glower faded somewhat when he got a good look at my face, but he pumped it up again after a couple of seconds and said, “What the hell are you doing here?” in the same belligerent tone he’d used on our first meeting.

“I’ve got some questions to ask you, Mr. Robideaux.”

“You tried that yesterday,” he said. “It didn’t work then; it’s not going to work now. Beat it. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“Maybe you’ll have something to say to the county sheriffs investigators, then.”

“What?”

“They’ll be along pretty soon. And they won’t be as easy to deal with as I am.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No? I’m talking about Frank O’Daniel.”

“That bastard. What about him?”

“He’s dead. Or didn’t you know?”

It seemed he hadn’t known. Either that, or he was putting on a good act. He said, “Dead? What do you mean, dead?”

“It’s been on the radio.”

“I don’t listen to the radio. O’Daniel . . . what happened to him? How did he die?”

“His houseboat blew up last night at Shasta Lake. I was there; I almost got blown up myself.”

“Jesus,” Robideaux said. The belligerence was gone now; he looked shaken, a little pale around the gills.

“It might have been an accident,” I said, “just like Munroe Randall’s death might have been an accident. I’m betting neither one was, though. I’m betting they were both murdered.”

He shook his head, as if he were only half listening to me; the other half of his mind seemed to be on something else. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “I was here last night.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. Alone.”

“No visitors?”

“Listen, you,” he said, “I’m not doing any more talking. Not to you, not to anybody until I see my lawyer.” He started to back up, to close the door.

I said, “Have it your way. I’ll go get the truth out of Mrs. O’Daniel.”

He stopped backing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“You tell me, smart-ass.”

“I’ve seen that painting of yours she’d got hanging over her fireplace,” I said. “And I know about the two of you. Now you and I can talk it over, or I can go to her. Either way. And watch what you call me from now on. I’ve had all the crap I’m going to take off you or anybody else.”

Part of it was a shot in the dark; if there was nothing between him and Helen O’Daniel, all he had to do was slam the door in my face. But he didn’t do that. He just stood there looking at me. No glower now; his long, thin face was still pale, and if anything he looked worried and maybe a little scared.

Ten seconds went by while we matched stares. It was no contest, though: He let his breath out in a wobbly sigh and said, “Okay. We’ll talk.”

“Inside, huh? It’s wet out here.”

He backed up again, into the room this time, and let me come in and shut the door. The place was as much an artist’s studio as it was living quarters; most of the rear wall was glass, a skylight had been cut into the roof back there, and that part of the room was cluttered with easels, canvases, a table full of bottles and tubes and brushes, a paint-stained drop cloth on the floor. The walls were covered with finished oils, and more were propped up along the baseboard—fifty or sixty altogether, at a quick guess. Not all of them were as awful as the one over Helen O’Daniel’s fireplace, but they were all in the same vomit-stirred-on-canvas class and all done in odd pastels and off-colors. The effect was almost hallucinatory, like a bad trip on some drug or other. A claustrophobe trapped in here would have gone bonkers inside of ten minutes.

Robideaux had entered a little kitchen alcove and was rummaging in a cupboard. He came out with a bottle of bourbon, poured himself about three fingers, downed them in one swallow. Then he shuddered and walked back to where I was. There was color in his cheeks now, the same shade as his fiery hair; he seemed to have himself under a kind of rigid control.

He said, “How did you find out about Helen and me?”

“I’m a detective, remember?”

“Yeah, well, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

“No?”

“No. They were going to get a divorce.”

“Were they? That’s news to me.”

“It’s the truth. So you see? Neither of us had any reason to kill O’Daniel.”

“Sure. Except that now she gets
all
their assets, not just half of them.”

“I don’t like the way your dirty little mind works,” he said.

“I could say the same thing about yours, if you want to play it that way.”

We glared at each other some more. It was no contest this time, either; he turned abruptly and went to an easy chair covered in brown cloth and folded his big frame into it stiffly. He sat there not looking at me.

I moved over near him, but I stayed on my feet. “How long have you and Mrs. O’Daniel been seeing each other?”

“Don’t you know? I thought you knew everything.”

“Some things, not all. That’s why I’m here.”

Pretty soon he said, “All right. About three months.”

“Regularly?”

“Whenever we could. Two or three times a week.”

“Out here?”

“No. Her place sometimes, during the day. Motels.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She showed up at a crafts fair in Red Bluff, where I had some of my paintings on exhibit. We got to talking and we hit it off.” He shrugged. “So we ended up back here.”

“Didn’t she have any qualms about coming to Musket Creek?”

“Later, sure. Not that night.”

“Why not?”

“She didn’t know who I was or where I lived until we got here; she never involved herself in O’Daniel’s lousy company—not to much of an extent, anyway.”

“But you knew who she was?”

“You trying to say I hit on her because I thought she could influence her old man? Well, you’re wrong. In the first place, I
didn’t
know who she was, not until she told me later, out here; we weren’t into last names in Red Bluff. And in the second place, O’Daniel never paid any attention to what she said or did. Hell, she hung that painting of mine right there in their living room, didn’t she?”

“Why did she do that?”

“A joke. I thought it was a stupid idea, but she said he’d never notice. And he never did.”

“I noticed.”

“Yeah. A stupid idea.”

I said, “So she and O’Daniel had a lousy marriage.”

“The pits. They barely spoke to each other and they hadn’t slept together in close to a year. That’s why she was so willing the day she met me.”

“You were her first extramarital affair, is that it?”

“No. She’s not a nun; she’d made it with a couple of other guys since her husband turned off on her.”

“What other guys?”

“How do I know? I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell me.”

“But she wasn’t seeing anybody when she met you?”

“No.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Sure I’m sure. She wouldn’t lie to me.”

The hell she wouldn’t, I thought. Little Miss Roundheels. She’d started up with Munroe Randall, it seemed, while she was already playing around with Robideaux—juggling two separate affairs. And I’d have bet a hundred bucks that she’d been at Randall’s house the night he died, plus another hundred that it hadn’t been for tea and cakes and a social chat.

But I didn’t say any of that to Robideaux. He wouldn’t like hearing it, and it might close him off. I said, “What put the damper on her marriage? Originally, I mean.”

“He did. Maybe he had something going on the side himself. Or maybe he got wrapped up in being a big shot; he was never home, always running off to meetings, always working late at the office. Or, hell, maybe he just got bored and lost interest.”

Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe
she
was the one who got bored and lost interest, with or without provocation.

I asked, “If things were that bad, how come she stayed married to him?”

“Why do you think? He was making money. Everybody likes money.”

“He wasn’t making money recently. Northern Development is overextended; that’s why they’ve been fighting so hard on the Musket Creek project.”

“I know that,” Robideaux said.

“Then how come the sudden decision on divorce?”

“It wasn’t Helen’s idea.”

“No? You mean it was O’Daniel’s?”

“He was going to file any day. He told her that.”

“When did he tell her?”

“A week ago.”

“What made
him
decide he wanted out?”

“He said he was fed up with her sleeping around on him.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all he told her.”

“He didn’t try to get her to waive her community property rights, did he? Or to take some kind of smaller settlement?”

“Christ, no. She’d have laughed in his face.”

“I’ll bet she would.”

“Like I said before, she had no reason to kill him. Nobody did. It must’ve been an accident—”

“Nobody did?” I said. “How about you and just about everybody who lives out here? With Randall and O’Daniel both dead, Northern Development will probably go belly up. That’s damned good news for Musket Creek.”

“Sure. But I didn’t kill anybody to make it happen, and neither did any of my neighbors. I’ve been here six years. I know these people. None of them is capable of cold-blooded murder.”

“How about Helen O’Daniel? Is
she
capable of it?”

“No, and the hell with you.”

“You love her, huh?”

“Close enough,” he said.

“And she loves you.”

“So?”

“I’m just wondering why she didn’t call to tell you about her husband’s death. You’ve got a telephone sitting right over there, and she’s known about it ever since early this morning.”

He came out of the chair, narrow-eyed and tense. “Get out of here,” he said.

“It’s nothing you haven’t been wondering yourself, Robideaux,” I said. “Why didn’t she call?”

“She’s got a reason, all right? Now get the hell out of my house. Otherwise, you and I are going to have trouble, cops or no cops.”

He meant it; I could see it in his eyes. I’d got what I’d come for—some of it, anyhow—and I didn’t mind leaving, but I didn’t want to do it too quickly, didn’t want to give him the idea he could push me around.

I said, “Okay. A little warning first, though: If you’re holding anything back, protecting Helen O’Daniel or anybody else, you’d better think it over twice. Accessory to murder puts you behind bars a long time in California.”

I went out and shut the door softly on its latch behind me. The rain had stopped and there were more blue jigsaw pieces overhead; you could hear the water dripping in the surrounding woods like a chorus of leaky faucets. The heat was rebuilding, so that the air had a wet, steamy feel that was almost tropical.

In the car I sat for a time and thought over what I’d found out. Not much, really. Maybe Robideaux and Helen O‘Daniel were in love, but it was more likely he’d been using her—starving artist latching onto a meal ticket—and she’d been using him, too, for stud service. From what I’d seen, both of them deserved each other. Robideaux had plenty of motive for killing both Randall and O’Daniel, but none of it seemed particularly strong. I couldn’t see him doing it for community reasons; he was too self-centered for that. His home meant something to him, but it wasn’t special enough to warrant homicide in order to maintain it. Ditto his affair with Mrs. O’Daniel. Even if he’d found out she was seeing Randall behind his back, he just wasn’t the type to knock off a rival. If he was going to kill anybody in that kind of situation, it would probably be Helen herself.