Nightshades (Nameless Detective) (12 page)

Mrs. O‘Daniel also had plenty of motive for disposing of both her husband and her lover: O’Daniel to get her hands on what was left of his assets; Randall for any one of half a dozen good reasons, including the possibility that he’d been playing around on her too. She was the type to fly off into a jealous and violent rage, given enough impetus. But was she really dumb enough to believe she could murder both of them, no matter how clever her methods, and get away with it? All murderers are stupid, Jim Telford had said. Well, maybe. Maybe.

The one puzzling thing I’d learned was Frank O‘Daniel’s apparently sudden decision to file for divorce—assuming Mrs. O’Daniel hadn’t been lying to Robideaux about that, for reasons of her own. O’Daniel had told Treacle he couldn’t afford to divorce his wife. What had changed his mind? It was something I would have to check on.

The air was stuffy inside the car; I rolled down the window to let in some of the dying wind. Then I started the engine, backed out onto the road, and headed back the way I’d come.

But I didn’t get far, not much more than a few hundred yards. I came around a sharp turn, going fairly slow, twenty-five or so, and on the other side of it was an old black car pulled slantwise across the road, completely blocking it. And somebody, for Christ’s sake, was sitting on the hood, somebody wearing a yellow rain slicker and a yellow floppy hat.

There was no room to get around on either side; I hit the brakes, hard. The car slewed sideways on the muddy road surface and the wheel tried to come out of my hands. I held it, managed to get the machine stopped at an angle to the other one, not twenty feet from its right front fender.

Sweat stung my eyes; I sleeved it off and jammed the door handle down and got out yelling. “What the hell’s the goddamn idea? I almost plowed into you!”

The guy on the hood stepped down, slowly, and I saw who he was: Jack Coleclaw’s son, Gary. The car was the old Chrysler he’d been working on inside the garage yesterday. He covered about half the distance between us and then stopped. Both of his hands were thrust inside the slicker’s slash pockets.

He said, “I been waiting for you. I seen you drive by our place and come up here. So I followed you.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“To tell you something,” he said, and he took his hand out of his pocket. “You better go away and don’t ever come back here again. That’s what I got to say.”

What he was holding was a gun, a rusty-looking old revolver with a long barrel.

I went tight all over; I could feel more sweat come oozing out of me. But he wasn’t pointing the thing in my direction—he was just moving it up and down, hefting it. The whole scene was bizarre, a little unreal. For some crazy reason I found myself thinking of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, tough guys with sneering faces saying, “Get out of town, stranger, or I’ll fill you full of lead.”

“Listen, Gary,” I said, quietly, “put that thing away. You don’t need to—”

“You
listen,” he said. “I mean it. Go away and don’t come back to Musket Creek. If you do . . .” and he moved the revolver again. He knew how to use it, too; the way he was handling it told me that.

He backed up to the Chrysler, opened the driver’s door with his left hand, and slid inside. The starter ground, the engine chattered. He put the car in reverse and backed down the road, not too fast, not too slow, until he reached a wide place where he could turn around. Then he and the Chrysler were gone and I was standing there alone in the heat, listening to the rainwater drip in the trees and waiting for my pulse rate to slow to normal.

Get out of town, stranger, or I’ll fill you full of lead . . .

When I got back to the Sportsman’s Rest there was a dark blue Datsun parked in front of Kerry’s and my room, and when I went inside she said, “I rented a car while you were off in Ragged-Ass Gulch. I’m tired of being stuck here all by myself. At least now I can go someplace if I feel like it.”

Her tone dared me to argue with her; I didn’t argue with her. I went to the telephone instead and tried to call Helen O’Daniel. No answer. I called the sheriffs department and asked for Jim Telford. He was gone for the day, and no, they weren’t allowed or even inclined to give out his home number. I looked up his name in the telephone directory. He wasn’t listed.

Kerry said, “Martin Treacle called. He wants you to call him back right away.”

“Did he sound calmer than he was this morning?”

“No. I think he wants his hand held.”

“Let’s go have dinner,” I said.

So we went and had dinner—a companionable one, for a change. And we came back and I tried the O’Daniel number again and still nobody answered. I read a 1936 issue of
Detective Fiction Weekly
; Kerry read her mystery novel. I wanted to make love in spite of my sore face; she didn’t. She went to sleep and I lay there, wide awake, thinking about the investigation and contemplating my lot in life.

At the moment, neither one seemed very promising.

The way Monday started off, I knew it was going to be a humdinger.

I didn’t sleep very well that night—bad dreams, some involving explosions and fire and hands with guns in them shooting me, then dragging my body down into dark water; others crazily erotic and involving not Kerry but Jeanne Emerson. When I woke up in the morning I felt groggy and my face hurt and the sheets were damply bunched under me. I also happened to be alone in bed: a little fumbling around told me that.

I managed to get my eyes open, to sit up. Kerry was hunched at the dining table across the room, wearing nothing but her bra and panties, playing solitaire. Uh-oh, I thought with a fuzzy sort of bewilderment. Now what did I do? The only times I had seen her play solitaire was when she was angry and upset, and as far as I knew she hadn’t gone out anywhere. Which left me—something to do with me.

“Morning,” I said, more or less cheerfully. And waited.

Silence. She didn’t even look my way, much less quit slapping cards down on the table.

“Hey. Remember me?”

Silence.

“Kerry? What’s the matter?”

She paused with part of the deck in one hand and a red queen in the other. Her head came around, slowly, and the look she gave me would have wilted a rose at twenty paces. “What’s the matter?” she said. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter. You talk in your goddamn sleep.”

“What?”

“In your sleep. Talk. You.”

“What?”

“‘Oh, Jeanne,’ you said. ‘Oh, baby.’ And the whole time you were pawing
me
and snuggling up. ‘Oh, Jeanne baby.’ You son of a bitch.”

I was awake now, good and awake. I swung out of bed and got up too fast and almost tripped over a chair that was on that side. As it was, I reeled a little and banged into the wall and cracked my elbow. I wheeled around to face her—the Naked Ape, standing there with his tail and his secret hanging out.

“Listen,” I said, “listen, I had some kind of crazy dream, that’s all. You can’t hold somebody responsible for what he dreams. The subconscious—”

“Don’t give me that crap,” she said. “I don’t give a damn about your subconscious. It’s your conscious I’m interested in. Not to mention your conscience. How many times did you sleep with her?”

“What?”

“Jeanne Emerson, the Chinese fireball. How many times?”

“I never slept with her, not once—”

“Hah. ”

“Kerry—”

“Sure. ‘Oh, Jeanne baby.’ Sure.”

“I’m telling you, I did not go to bed with her.”

She slapped the red queen down hard enough to make the other cards jump. Otherwise, silence.

“Come on, now,” I said, “this is silly. You can’t be this upset over some stupid dream I had—”

“It wasn’t your dream, it was what you said. And what you did.”

“What did I do?”

“Something you never did before.”

“
What
, for God’s sake?”

She told me what. I gawped at her a little.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Not to
me
, no. That’s the point. You sure as hell must have done it to
her.”

“Look, how many times do I have to say it, I never did anything with or to Jeanne Emerson!”

“You’re lying. You’ve got guilt written all over your face.”

“Goddamn it, I’m not lying!”

“Quit yelling.”

“I’m not yelling either!” I was good and mad now, partly because I was feeling guilty—and that was stupid because I really didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. “I’m tired of all this, the way you’ve been acting lately. Accusations, mood changes, me having to walk on eggshells around you all the time . . . I won’t put up with it anymore. ”

“You’re trying to change the subject—”

“The hell I am. You want
me
to start confessing; how about if
you
do some confessing? How about telling me why you’ve been so bitchy the past couple of weeks. ”

She looked away from me. Her face was white, her hands were clenched into tight little fists.

“Well?” I said.

She came up out of the chair so fast she whacked into the table and sent the cards flying. The look of strain on her face was a little frightening. “Did—you—sleep—with—Jeanne—Emerson?”

The way she said that was a little frightening, too, and it took the edge off my own anger. I started to reach out to her, but she backed away from me; her hands were still clenched.

“Kerry, calm down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down. Tell me the truth. Did you screw her?”

“No. I swear to you I didn’t. ”

“Liar. ”

“I said I swear it to you. She wanted me to. She even . . . ah hell, she came on to me one night, the last time I saw her. The night she came to my flat to take her photographs.”

“Came on to you? What do you mean by that?”

“Made a pass at me, what do you think I mean?”

“She came right out and asked you to go to bed with her?”

“No. I was showing her something—”

“I’ll bet you were.”

“—in one of my pulp magazines, and she put her arms around me and kissed me and then . . . ”

“And then
what?
”

“All right. She grabbed me.”

“Grabbed you? I thought you said she had her arms around you.”

“Hell. You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t know. You tell me.”

“She grabbed my private part, all right?”

“Your private part.”

“That’s right, my private part.”

“And what did you do?”

“I’m not the lustful swine you think I am,” I said. “I took it away from her.”

She looked at my face. Then she looked at the middle of my anatomy. Then the strain went away, and color came back into her cheeks, and her mouth began to twitch—and suddenly she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard tears squeezed out of her eyes; she staggered past me to the bed and collapsed on it and sat there cackling and hooting like a madwoman.

“What the hell’s so funny?”

“You took it away from her!” Kerry said, and let out a whoop that rattled the windows. “Oh my God! You took it away from her!”

“Ha, ha. Big joke.”

“What did she say when you tore it out of her hand? ‘Oh please, give it back to me?”’ Another whoop.

“She didn’t say anything, she just left, and I haven’t seen her since. Okay? You satisfied?”

Kerry giggled and snorted for another ten seconds or so before she got herself under control. “Oh Lord,” she said, wiping her eyes, “I wish I’d been there. I wish I’d seen the expression on your face when she grabbed you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it wasn’t funny at the time. It’s still not funny from where I stand.”

“Maybe not from where you stand, sweetie,” she said, “but from where I’m sitting I’ve got a different perspective on the thing. ” And she was off on another fit of cackling.

I glared at her.

Pretty soon she quit laughing altogether, wiped her eyes again, put on a sober expression, and looked back at my face for a change. “You weren’t even tempted, huh?” she said.

“Sure I was tempted. Who wouldn’t be tempted? My subconscious is probably
still
tempted, which is the reason for that stupid dream last night. ”

“You sound angry,” she said. “Are you angry?”

“Yeah, I’m angry. I didn’t want to tell you about that night with Jeanne Emerson; it’s embarrassing. And I don’t like having to defend myself all the time, either. I’m tired of being sniped at and treated like a villain.”

“Don’t start yelling again,” she said.

“I’m not yelling, damn it. I’m not yelling. I’m just trying to talk to you here, get some things out into the open.”

“What things?”

“You know what things. The way you’ve been acting, all this moody stuff. What’s bothering you, anyway?”

Her gaze shifted to her hands. “Nothing’s bothering me.”

“Bull. Come on, what is it?”

Headshake.

“Kerry, talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing you can do.”

Wetness glistened in her eyes again, and her face showed more of the strain. She was hurting, that was plain now. And it made me hurt too—chased away my mad and replaced it with tenderness. I moved over to the bed and sat down and put my arm around her.

“Babe, you’ve got to tell me what this is all about. It’s tearing both of us up, you keeping it bottled inside.”

Silence.

“Tell me,” I said. “Please.”

More silence. But then, just as I was about to coax her another time, she sighed and said, “Ray—it’s Ray.”

“Ray? You mean Ray Dunston?”

“Yes.”

Ray Dunston was her ex-husband, a criminal lawyer in Los Angeles. Kerry had divorced him a couple of years ago, because their marriage had gone stale and because she suspected he was seeing other women; that was the catalyst for her move north to San Francisco. She’d referred to him several times as a schmuck, and in my book that was what he was for letting her get away from him.

I said, “What about him?”

“He . . . I think he’s mentally ill.”

“What?”

“He gave up his law practice three months ago,” she said. “And sold his house and gave up liquor and meat and half a dozen other things, including sex. He’s become a religious convert.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“I don’t think it’s a healthy thing, not in Ray’s case. He said he couldn’t bear to deal with drug peddlers and thieves and whores any more, but that’s not all of it. Something happened to him; something happened inside him. His new religion . . . it’s one of those off-the-wall Southern California cults. He
chants
, for God’s sake.”

“Chants?”

“Some sort of . . . I don’t know, what do you call it, a mantra? They make their people chant it forty or fifty times a day, no matter where they are. Ray . . . you never met him, you don’t know what he was like before. Pseudo-sophisticated, success-oriented, a real three-piecer. And now . . . his head is practically shaved, he wears poverty clothes, and he lives in a commune.”

“When did you see him?”

“He showed up at my place about a month ago,” she said. “Drove up from L.A. with another member of the commune. It was . . . unreal. Scary.”

“Why scary? Lots of men in their forties go through some sort of identity crisis.”

“No, it’s not like that. I told you—he’s
changed
. Completely. He’s not the same man I was married to.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why you were scared. He’s not part of your life anymore.”

“That’s just it. He wants to be.”

She said that without looking at me. I used two fingers against her chin to lift and turn her head. “What do you mean, he wants to be?”

“He wants me again. As his wife. That’s part of this whole . . . this conversion of his. He’s decided he loves me and has to have me back.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “My God, can you see me living in a commune with a man who chants?”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him the truth—that he
isn’t
part of my life any longer, that he never can be again.”

“How did he take it?”

“Not very well. He wouldn’t accept it.”

“He didn’t get abusive or anything?”

“No. He was so calm it was . . . well, that’s what scares me. How calm he is. The way he looked at me. His eyes . . . that’s why I think something must have snapped in his mind.”

I said, “You think he’s dangerous?”

“No, he’d never hurt me. It’s just that . . .”

“Just that what?”

“He’s called me seven or eight times since his visit. No matter what I say he won’t listen, he won’t go away. He’s just ‘ .. there in my life again.”

“Change your phone number,” I said.

“All that’d do is bring him back to San Francisco. I can’t move on account of him. I won’t disrupt my life any more than it already has been.”

I was silent.

After a few seconds she said, “What are you thinking?”

I still didn’t say anything.

She said sharply, “You’re thinking maybe you should go down to L.A. and have a talk with him, tell him to leave me alone. Right?”

“What if I am? That’s what you want, isn’t it—for him to leave you alone?”

“Yes. But it wouldn’t do any good; it would only make things worse if he knew about you.”

“So you haven’t told him about us.”

“No, and I’m not going to. He wouldn’t listen to you in any case, you’d get angry and do or say something stupid, there’d be trouble of some kind . . . oh, God, that’s why I didn’t tell you about this before. I know you. I know how you brood about things, get them all blown out of proportion, and go off huffing and puffing and making blunders. ”