Something blue (7 page)

"Why don't you—er—hunt around a little?" the lawyer said unhappily. "I guess it's true enough that we can always break her heart another day."

Johnny bought himself two sandwiches and a small carton of milk. He drove to the park where he sat on a bench, ate one-and-a-half sandwiches and fed the other half to some birds. During tliis time he tried not to thinjc at all. At the

end of the time, a sentence came clear and cool into his head, and he knew exactly what he was going to do.

He drove to the fat-walled stucco fortiess where Roderick Grnncs lived.

"I've got an old murder case," Johnny told him, "that I am going to dig into for reasons of my own. I don't ask you to take an interest at all but I do a.sk you this: Would you be willing to say, to anyone who inquires, that I'm working on it for you?"

Roderick Grimes took him by his lapels. "Come in here. If you think you are going to say no more—Sit down. Expound."

Johnny sat down. "You can't use this," he warned. "Or even talk about it. I'll have to have your word. Any decision to talk has to be mine." Mine, his heart echoed.

"Granted."

So Johnny expounded.

"You're right," Grimes said at the end. "It's possible, and even probable, that this McCauley is slightly off his rocker. A guilty man who has made up a fantasy to bury the guilt under. Either so that he can see himself as a noble martyr, or because this makes the punishment he desperately needs all the more Qjuel." -'•

John nodded unhappily.

"On the other hand, your Dick Bartee sounds like—what was that phrase?—a ring-tailed doozer, all right. According to Rush."

"Yeah," said Johnny miserably.

"I'll back you up," said Grimes. "I'll even—No, I won't either. I was going to say I might even come down and throw my weight around. But I can't ofiFer. Know why?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm the armchair type," said Grimes, "creaking back, neither young nor spry, nor foolish. All's safe enough, if McCauley's a psycho. But hasn't it occurred to you that Dick Bartee, if he's a killer, may not sit still while you snoop among his Httle secrets?"

"He's not going to murder me" scoffed Johnny.

"My boy," said Roderick Grimes quaintly, "you could be murdered and you'd never know it. Well, report to me, mind. Of course, if I can't use it, I won't pay you."

"I realize that," Johnny grinned.

"Meanwhile," promised Roderick Grimes, "I'll do you another favor. I will sit here and think about it." Johnny felt comforted, somehow.

CHAPTERS

Johnny spent the rest of the day hunting old newspapers and magazine indices for accounts of the murder of Christy McCauley, in Hestia, Cahfomia, seventeen years ago. A no-good, drunken, womanizing bum had killed his young wife. Only the prominence of the Bartee family gave the stale plot much news value. Nothing new.

He walked into his parents' house about eight o'clock in the evening and was shocked stock-still on the carpet by the sight of his father at the card table, playing a placid game of Russian Bank with a pretty girl named Dorothy Padgett.

"Where's Nan?" Johnny said.

Dorothy turned her head and smiled. "Surprisel" she said. "Your dear mama said I must come . . ."

"She certainly mustn't stay alone," said Barbara Sims, busthng in.

"Where's Nan?" Johnny repeated. His feet had not moved another inch.

"Oh, she flew home with Dick," said Dorothy cheerfully. "He had to go back and he didn't want to leave her and she's never met his folks, you know. He thought it would be good for her to get away."

"So I brought Dorothy home with me, of course," said his mother. "Where have you been all day? Have you had any food?"

"You say they flew?" Johnny almost could not get his next

words out. "You don't think they went by way of Nevada?"

Dorothy looked shocked. His mother said reproachfully,

"You can't think Nan would elopel The day Emily was

buried? Nan wouldn't do that."

Dorotliy said, "At least, she didn't. She called me and they're safe on the ground in Hestia." She watched him.

Johnny sat limply down. Maybe there wasn't as much time as he'd thought there would be. He was scared.

"Have they ... set a date?" he asked painfully, looking at nothing but his mother's carpet.

"I'll be in charge of the wedding," Dorothy said, "whenever it is."

"When will it be?" he insisted.

"Oh, I suppose soon. Nan won't want anything but a very simple wedding. No splash. Because of Emily . . ."

"Simple and soon, huh?" he murmured.

Dorothy turned and cards fell out of the pattern on the table and landed on the floor. "What's the matter, Johrmy?"

Johnny's father began patiently to pick up the cards.

"I've been with Roderick Grimes," said Johnny, "and he gave me a job."

"Well?" said his mother impatiently. "You know, Johnny, you are going to have to get used to the idea that Nan w going to marry this man."

Johnny's gi-een eyes flickered at her. "Grimes wants me to dig up the dope on another old case. Happened years.^go.-In Hestia." ^

"For goodness sakesl"'his mother said.

His father stopped shuffling cards.

"A young woman named Christy McCauley was hit on the head one night—in the Barter's house."

He heard them gasp.

"Her husband's in prison for doing the deed," Johnny tried to be Hght, "but Grimes thinks—oh, you know, the usual. More to it than meets the eye."

"Johnny, you can't do this," his mother said.

"Yes, I can, Ma," he replied gravely. "If I don't, somebody else will."

"You should let somebody else, then," his mother said severely. "You, of all people, as close as you've been to Nan, can't go down there and bother those Bartees about an old tragic thing they'd surely rather forget."

Dorothy had been sitting very still indeed. She said, "Was the murdered woman related to Dick?"

"No, not directly. She was related to old Mrs. Bartee."

"Is old Mrs. Bartee still alive?" asked his mother.

''Yes she is," said Dorothy. "Did "Then, Johnny, you absolutely cam But Dorothy said, "You don't wani family, do you, Johnny?''

He opened his mouth, took air, do She said briskly, "How and when a "Driving. In the morning." "I'U go, too.''

Johnny didn't know what to say. "What's going on?" said Barbara Si Dorothy leaned forward. "It's jus all know that you did go to see At least I know it, and I think your worried about this old murder ca: didn't want Nan mixed up with tha the matter?"

Johnny felt the red in his face. ] "I guess," he said, "this is what yc tuition."

"You may as well give up," his J deal out a solitaire game.

"All right. O.K. I'll admit I took rights of it."

"In what way?" his mother frowne Johnny searched for a stout lie t< mother's intuition. "There's an idea, tee family kinda drove this poor hu way they froze him out. I mean, il pie . .."

"Ummm," said his mother. "It's tn thing about them, do we?" "It's too late." said Dorothv.

He rose.

"That's awful early for you, Dotty," he wen "Maybe you could write Nan and fix it up to g day or so?"

Dorothy was looking up at him. She said rather go with you, Johnny." The phrase rockec was an echo in it somewhere.

His mother said, "Dorothy, you go right si this minute. I'll pack for you."

The women scurried.

"Do you give up?" his father said to John] stood there. Johnny rubbed his head.

There must be such a thing as male intuitior later. Because his father said to him quietly, step, son."

In the old frame house that stood, smothere< big trees for miles around, the nurse was he] lady to bed in the front room downstairs.

"Such a s^veet little girl, isn't she, Mrs. BarteCi

The old lady's teeth were in the glass and she to smile. She mumbled through her soft old li mire to have a young and pretty face in the he did. There was Josephine. There was Christy."

"And Miz Bianche."

(The old lady didn't - include Miz Blanche.] is Nan. Nan. It doesn't suit her."

"Short names are all the rage," the nurse said.

In the huge parlor, the other side of tf Blanche Bartee said to her husband Bartholc can't im.agine Dick married to that child. And I can't imagine . . ."

"You don't think he's changed? You don't think he's settled? Dick makes you nervous?"

The bracelets were still. "No, no," she murmured nervously.

Upstairs in the hall, at the door of the big back bedroom, Dick said to his fiancee, "You're tired. Been a long bad day. Sleep well."

"I think I will sleep," Nan said. "I feel at home here. Isn't that strange?"

"No."

"Why not?" Nan spoke dreamily.

"Because wherever I am is your home, love." He was murmuring. "Marry me. Why must we wait?"

"Just a httle while," Nan said. "Not too long, darling."

Dorothy wasn't a chatterer today. Mile after mile slipped undre the car's wheels in the misty morning and she asked no questions, either. But she was a presence. Johnny couldn't forget that she was there. Finally he said, "What will you do if the Bartees won't take you in?"

"I'll stay in a motel."

Something about this stubbornness pleased him. "Then maybe you don't think it's too late."

"It's late," she said.

"What do you think of Dick Bartee?"

"I think he's—been around."

"Is he really in love with Nan?"

"Shes in love," Dorothy said crisply. "He gave her an awful rush. She was too used to you, Johnny."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh ... I don't know. He's too old for Nan."

"Thirty-two. I'm twenty-eight, of course."

"You're too old for her, too," said Dorothy tartly.

Johnny looked sideways. "You're on the warpath," he said.

"Oh, Johnny, don't—"

"Don't what?"

"Don't go round the mulberry bush. And don't ever take a he-detector test, either."

;'Whatl"

"How do you suppose I knew you were lying about not seeing Emily?" Johnny remembered her head on his breast when his heart had jumped. Dorothy now put her cool

fingers gently on his wrist. "You just made up this job with Roderick Griines. Didn't you?"

He knew his heart jumped again. He took his hand off the wheel, turned it, and put her hand away. "I've got the job," he said sternly. "And none of your tricks."

She was contrite. "All right, Johnny. Don't tell me anything more, if you don't want to."

"Oh I want to," he said in a moment. "We're on the same side. Maybe I need you."

"Maybe," she murmured. Her head was turned away.

"This Christy McCauley was twenty-two years old," Johnny began. "She got killed by a blow, and her husband was caught with the weapon in his hand. I talked to him in prison."

"Oh?"

"I think ni have to tell you this," Johnny went on judiciously. "He thinks Dick Bartee did it."

"I see," said Dorothy at last. "So that's it." She straightened. "Did Emily know that? How could she know that?"

"Don't know," he said quickly. "She wanted me to—try and find out—"

"Why didn't you tell us?" Dorothy denianded.

"Because look, Dot—there's a good possibility this^manr McCauley, may be just psycho. There's no real reason to be-Heve what he says."

"You should have told us," Dorothy said stonily.

"I . . . What about Nanr

"What about her?" said Dorothy. If anybody^ thought my fiance had ever killed anybody, Vd want to know about it."

Johnny winced. But he could not tell her any more. He could not tell her who Nan was. He had promised.

Dorothy said, "I don't see what you think you're going to do. The Bartees aren't going to break down and tell you a lot of stuff that never came out before. Dick isn't going to admit it, if he ever killed anybody. You'll have to tell Nan the whole business, Johnny, because that is all you will be able to do."

Johnny said angrily, "I am not going to tell her unless I've got a lot more reason to think there's something to it. And you're not going to tell her imtil I say so."

Dorothy said nothing,

"Promise me that, Dot, or I'll—"

'^ouni what?'' she asked coolly.

They drove in silence a mile or two.

Johnny said at last, "Well, what are we going to do? In your independent judgment." He smiled at her. "You've got rights, Dot. I'm sorry."

She said, siuprising him, "I can see how hard it is—for you. You are going to look pretty jealous and mean, aren't you?"

"That's right," he said grimly, in a moment.

"How long ago wa5 this murder?" she asked.

"Seventeen years," he snapped. Dorothy had made him smart and sting.

"But Dick was just a kidi"

"Fifteen years old."

"But that's impossible!"

"Nope, not impossible. I haven't told you about another talk I had . . ." So now he gave her the George Rush eye-view of Dick Bartee.

"Anything else you haven't told me?" she asked him mildly when he had finished.

He reflected. Couldn't talk about the money. That would come too close to connecting Nan with the Bartees. He said, "Something else, one way or the other, is what I'm after."

Dorothy was silent a long time. Then she said, "I wonder why you don't trust me."

"I still don't know what you're going to do," he said in exasperation. "Look, if I were positive . . . but I'm not. Dotty. I just don't know. I want to protect Nan from any kind of hurt, and it's hard for me. You're right, I'm going to look jealous and mean if I tell all this. Yet I've got to know. Why can't you see that?"

"I see that," said Dorothy in a moment, gravely. "I'll be quiet, Johnny. Not that I agree, but because I'd be a fool to do what you don't want me to do, when I know there's something more you haven't told me."

He didn't speak.

"I will trust you,'' she said. "I know you always have looked out for Nan."

He felt relieved. He picked up her left hand. He wanted to make her know he was grateful, so he started to raise it to his hps. Dorothy snatched it away. "The Bartees might

throw you out," she said brightly, "but if they let me in, I'll be your inside spy."