Mother Finds a Body (17 page)

“Yeah,” Biff said, “and I figure it's a good idea to let the sheriff in on it. He's liable to hear about it and he won't trust us if we don't spring it on him first. I got him pegged as a pretty solid citizen. I think he'd be our best bet. Tell him everything and we can't go wrong.”

I was agreeing with Biff heartily when the swinging doors were thrown open and I saw Hank enter the saloon. He stood for an instant looking around the room, then his eyes settled on us.

“I was looking for you,” he said. He didn't take off his hat. His manner seemed less cordial than usual.

“And where else would you expect to find me?” Biff said affably. “Where there's a bar you can always find me at it. Pull up a rock and make yourself comfortable.” Biff yelled to the bartender. “One double rye for my friend!”

Reflected in the mirror by the bar was a white suit with padded
shoulders. Cullucio's back was to us, but I knew he was listening.

The sheriff stared at the line of bottles on the bar shelves, or was he staring at the white shoulders, too?

Biff opened his mouth to speak. Then suddenly he stopped.

“We're on the Erie, eh?”

When Biff spoke, the white suit moved toward the office, but two men moved into the space Cullucio left. I'm not good at recognizing faces after my third rye, but I could have sworn they were the two men I had seen go into Cullucio's office.

Biff tossed a couple of bills on the bar. He pushed back his stool and helped me to my feet.

“Let's take a walk,” he said.

“We'll walk over to my office,” the sheriff said casually. Not casually enough to please me, though. It was almost midnight, and midnight is no time to get friendly with the police.

Not that Hank was being very friendly. The walk to the office was a silent one. It wasn't far, though, and the air smelled good after the staleness of the crowded saloon.

We walked past the entertainment district. Gradually the signs became smaller and farther apart. Then there were no more bars. The street had taken on the appearance of any small Western town. Neat little houses with white picket fences were side by side. They each had a patch of dry yellow lawn in front of them. Most of the houses were alike and they all needed paint.

At the corner was one house larger than the others. A battered car was parked in front of it. Next to the license plate was a green enamel plaque with a white cross on it.

“That's Doc Gonzales' house,” the sheriff said.

As we walked by, I saw a strip of light shining through the worn window shade.

“He keeps late hours,” I said, trying to make conversation.

The sheriff wasn't having any. He didn't answer me.

We walked on for another block. Then he turned into a walkway. I recognized the frame building before me. The sheriff's office was on the ground floor. A balcony ran around the second
floor. The type of balcony they show in Western movies; just high enough from the ground for the hero to jump from it onto his horse's back.

The sheriff opened the door, and we entered his office. When he snapped on the light I was surprised at how different the place looked from the time Biff and I had been there before. The glare of the white overhead light made the room take on a businesslike appearance. When I had seen it before it had been flooded with sunlight. It hadn't looked like a sheriff's office. Now it did.

The sheriff seemed more like the law too. He arranged two chairs for Biff and me. Then he seated himself behind his roll-top desk. He opened a drawer at the right and placed a cardboard box on the desk. It looked like a shoe-box. He didn't open it right away. Instead he leaned forward on the desk and rested his weight on his elbows.

“I guess you know what's in that box,” the sheriff said slowly.

Biff laughed. “Well I know it isn't a bottle or you'd have had it opened before this.”

The sheriff didn't laugh with him. But he did open the box. He placed the tiny pearl-handled gun in front of Biff.

“That gun was purchased eight days ago in San Diego,” he said slowly. His eyes were cold his mouth firm. “Not yesterday or the day before, as Mrs. Lee said, but eight days ago.”

“You said that once,” Biff replied. “We caught it. Only you don't know Evangie. A day, eight days, it makes no difference to her when she's telling a story.”

The sheriff didn't take his eyes from Biff. They didn't even blink.

“It was bought in a pawnshop,” the sheriff said. “For twelve dollars. It wasn't bought by Mrs. Lee. It was bought by Gee Gee Graham.”

Biff's face fell into the stupidest expression. Maybe mine did, too. Only the sheriff's words didn't surprise me particularly. Had I been in Gee Gee's shoes
I
would have bought a gun.
I wouldn't have gone around shouting that it was mine, either, not with dead bodies scattered all over Restful Grove.

“She bought it under the name of Hazel Bronson,” the sheriff said.

“That's her real name,” I said. “Gee Gee Graham is a stage name.”

“I know. I know quite a lot about the lady,” the sheriff said. “I've had a complete report on all of you from the Los Angeles police. I know, for instance, that Miss Graham not only knew Gus Grange, but that she had reason to fear for her life at his hands.”

“You probably won't believe this,” Biff said, “but we were fixing to tell you all that as soon as we could get in touch with you. Another thing we had to mention was that Evangie thinks she recognized that handkerchief. She thinks it belongs to Corny Cobb. A lot of funny things have been going on lately, and I haven't been able to piece them together, but Gyp tells me someone was in the trailer. She was taking a nap and she heard someone prowling around. We know for a fact that this isn't the first time we've had company. There was that one time before when some guy slipped a corpse in our bathtub, too. Finding that handkerchief at the grave of the second corpse makes me absolutely certain that someone is trying to frame a member of our company. It's too coincidental that the handkerchief
fell
out of Corny's pocket. I think someone planted it there deliberately.

“As far as Gee Gee is concerned, you can talk to her yourself. If you think she had anything to do with it after she explains her connection with Gus, well, I'll put in with you. Mandy Hill is a jerk. I love him like a brother, but I got to admit he's a jerk. He would no more kill a guy than I would and I don't approve of murder. Especially when it's with knives in the back. We get enough of that in show business without bringing it into our private lives.

“Evangie is a changeable woman, but she's no murderer. Gyp here can't cut her own toenails because she's afraid of scissors. How do you think she'd be with a knife? Dimples, well,
one look at her and you got your answer. Take my advice, you look for a guy who's been doing this sort of thing for a long time and you've got your man. This isn't an amateur's murder, and you know it. The guy who's responsible for those two corpses is a guy that's broken in his act and played it plenty.”

The sheriff stood up. His expression certainly hadn't softened.

“I know you're all actors,” he said. “If I didn't, I might pay a little attention to that talk of yours. Now, get this straight. I'm not arresting anybody, now yet anyway. You can't leave town, so don't try. I'm coming out to Restful Grove tomorrow and I'm questioning each and every one of you. One more lie, or one more evasion of the truth, and I lock you all up.”

He opened the door for Biff and me. My legs felt a little weak, but I used them to get out of that office in a hurry. The sheriff closed the door behind us loudly. Biff and I kept walking. We didn't speak until we were halfway down the block.

“Of all the hypocrites!” Biff said. “And we thought he was fixed.”

“Dancing with Mother like that,” I said.

“Drinking my liquor,” Biff said.

Then we laughed.

“Not only that, but he hinted that we might be
good
actors.”

Ahead we could see the lights of the saloon district. The Oasis, The Blinking Pup, The Last Hole, finally The Happy Hour. We quickened our pace. The lights ahead seemed to make the street we were on even darker. It was too quiet, too peaceful.

The doctor's car was still parked in front of the house. The parking light threw a faintly red beam on the dried grass.

Suddenly Biff seized my arm.

“Listen!” he whispered.

There was a sound of a car starting up, the whir of a powerful motor. We stopped walking and listened closely. From one of the houses there was the click of a door lock falling in place. The beam of the headlights lit up and a low, cream-colored roadster sped down the driveway and into the street. It was headed toward the saloon district. It had left the doctor's driveway.

The strip of light that had been shining from under the doctor's window disappeared as Biff and I stared at the house.

“Did you get a look at the guy who was driving the car?” Biff asked.

It was Francisco Cullucio.

14
THE SHERIFF WAS AT THE TRAILER CAMP
before we had finished our morning coffee. He had two men with him, the same men who had been with the doctor the day we dug up the body. They were in their shirt sleeves. The heat was oppressive, and their shirts were wet with sweat.

Instead of stopping at our trailer, they went directly to the one next door. Little Johnny's father opened the door, and the three men stepped inside.

Mother put her head closer to the saucer with the Life Everlasting burning in it. The heat had brought on a severe asthma attack, and Mother had been inhaling the sticky smelling smoke all morning.

Biff and I drank our coffee silently. Gee Gee poured herself a second cup and pulled her chair closer to ours.

“Why doesn't he ask us what he's going to ask us and get it to hell over with?” she said irritably. “This damn suspense is driving me nuts.”

She spilled her coffee as she lifted the cup to her lips. It spattered on the table and Biff helped her wipe it up.

“If you hadn't lied in the first place . . .” He started to say more, but Gee Gee interrupted him.

“I didn't lie,” she screamed. Her cup went crashing to the ground. The hot coffee splashed her bare legs and her kimono. She didn't seem to notice it. “How did I know Evangie was going to say it was her gun? Why should I go around talking about a gun anyway? That'd be bright dialogue, admitting I had a gun when there's a guy in our bathtub that's been shot with one.”

She began wiping her leg with a paper napkin. She picked up the dusty cup and slammed it on the table.

“Seems there's a hell of a lot more lying being done around here than I'm guilty of. What the hell for? If nobody knows who the corpse is or who killed him, why do they lie? I seem to be the only one who had a reason for lying. Evangie says she didn't want Gyp's name to get in the newspapers. Well, I think that's a helluvan excuse for setting fire to the woods and burying a body. Then she says she thought it was Gyp's gun. Well, you can believe her if you want to. She's your mother, not mine. I'll be a son of a bitch if it sounds kosher to me.”

She jumped up and ran into the trailer.

Mother hadn't moved during the tirade. When the door slammed she lifted her head.

“That's gratitude for you,” she said. “After all we've done for that girl.”

Mamie poured more powder on the burning mound. She picked up Gee Gee's cup and dropped it into the dishpan. Mandy grabbed the dish towel and dried the cups and saucers as Mamie washed them. The uncomfortable silence was shattered by Dimples's voice.

“Will somebody fix me a bromo?” she yelled from the trailer. “So help me, I think they tried to poison me last night.”

Mamie filled a glass with water, picked up another clean one, and went into the trailer. It was going to take more than one Bromo Seltzer to cure Dimples, I thought. She had made enough the night before at a nickel a drink to retire with a hotdog stand. If she had been trying to win the crown from Joyce, it looked as if she had it in the bag.

Her voice rose petulantly from the trailer.

“Dammit all, you don't have to look at me like that. So I got a hangover, so what? Just because you got a hollow leg is no sign I have.”

I wondered if she meant Gee Gee or Mamie. Thinking about what she had said the night before, I settled for Mamie.

“I'll go dig up Corny,” Biff said. He went to the bedroom. In a few moments he had Corny up and out. It was the sheriff's
fault that Corny was still sponging on us. The comic wore Biff's bathrobe. Mandy's slippers were on his feet. He sank into a chair and sulked.

“So the long arm of the law wants our little party together eh?” he said sarcastically. “Well, he's got us. So what's he going to do for an encore?”

I poured him a cup of coffee and pushed the can of milk and the sugar bowl toward him.

“I'm sure I can't tell you that,” I said pleasantly. “I know what he's doing for an opening, though.”