The Doomsters (7 page)

“I ate my lunch. I ate it all up. You said I could have a special cocktail.”

“In the kitchen, dear. Juan will give you your cocktail in the kitchen.”

“I don’t want to go in the kitchen. I want to stay here, with people.”

“No, you can’t.” Zinnie was getting edgy. “Now be a nice
girl and do what you’re told, or I’ll tell Daddy about you. He won’t like it.”

“I don’t care. I want to stay here and talk to the people.”

“Some other time, Martha.” She rose and hustled the little girl out of the room. A long wail ended with the closing of a door.

“She’s a beautiful child.”

Mildred turned to me. “Which one of them do you mean? Yes, Martha is pretty. And she’s bright. But the way Zinnie is handling her—she treats her as if she were a doll.”

Mildred was going to say more, but Zinnie returned, closely followed by the houseboy with the drinks. I drank mine in a hurry, and ate the onion by way of lunch.

“Have another, Mr. Archer.” One drink had converted Zinnie’s tension into vivacity, of a sort. “We’ve got the rest of the shaker to knock back between us. Unless we can persuade Mildred to climb down off her high wagon.”

“You know where I stand on the subject.” Mildred gripped her glass of ginger ale defensively. “I see you’ve had the room redone.”

I said: “One’s enough for me, thanks. What I’d like to do, if you don’t object, is talk to the man who saw your brother-in-law. Sam something?”

“Sam Yogan. Of course, talk to Sam if you like.”

“Is he around now?”

“I think so. Come on, I’ll help you find him. Coming, Mildred?”

“I’d better stay here,” Mildred said. “If Carl comes to the house, I want to be here to meet him.”

“Aren’t you afraid of him?”

“No, I’m not afraid of him. I love my husband. No doubt it’s hard for you to understand that.”

The hostility between the two women kept showing its sharp edges. Zinnie said:

“Well, I’m afraid of him. Why do you think I’m sending Martha to town? And I’ve got half a mind to go myself.”

“With Dr. Grantland?”

Zinnie didn’t answer. She rose abruptly, with a glance at me. I followed her through a dining-room furnished in massive old mahogany, into a sunlit kitchen gleaming with formica and chrome and tile. The houseboy turned from the sink, where he was washing dishes:

“Yes, Missus?”

“Is Sam around?”

“Before, he was talking to policeman.”

“I know that. Where is he now?”

“Bunkhouse, greenhouse, I dunno.” The houseboy shrugged. “I pay no attention to Sam Yogan.”

“I know that, too.”

Zinnie moved impatiently through a utility room to the back door. As soon as we stepped outside, a young man in a western hat raised his head from behind a pile of oak logs. He came around the woodpile, replacing his gun in its holster, swaggering slightly in his deputy’s suntans.

“I’d stay inside if I was you, Mrs. Hallman. That way we can look after you better.” He looked inquiringly at me.

“Mr. Archer is a private detective.”

A peevish look crossed the young deputy’s face, as though my presence threatened to spoil the game. I hoped it would. There were too many guns around.

“Any sign of Carl Hallman?” I asked him.

“You check in with the sheriff?”

“I checked in.” Ostensibly to Zinnie, I said: “Didn’t you say there wouldn’t be any shooting? That the sheriff’s men would take your brother-in-law without hurting him?”

“Yes. Sheriff Ostervelt promised to do his best.”

“We can’t guarantee nothing,” the young deputy said. Even as he spoke, he was scanning the tree-shaded recesses of the back yard, and the dense green of the trees that
stretched beyond. “We got a dangerous man to deal with. He bust out of a security ward last night, stole a car for his getaway, probably stole the gun he’s carrying.”

“How do you know he stole a car?”

“We found it, stashed in a tractor turnaround between here and the main road. Right near where the old Jap ran into him.”

“Green Ford convertible?”

“Yeah. You seen it?”

“It’s my car.”

“No kidding? How’d he happen to steal your car?”

“He didn’t exactly steal it. I’m laying no charges. Take it easy with him if you see him.”

The deputy’s face hardened obtusely. “I got my orders.”

“What are they?”

“Fire if fired upon. And that’s leaning way over backwards. You don’t play footsie with a homicidal psycho, Mister.”

He had a point: I’d tried to, and got my lumps. But you didn’t shoot him, either.

“He isn’t considered homicidal.”

I glanced at Zinnie for confirmation. She didn’t speak, or look in my direction. Her pretty head was cocked sideways in a strained listening attitude. The deputy said:

“You should talk to the sheriff about that.”

“He didn’t threaten Yogan, did he?”

“Maybe not. The Jap and him are old pals. Or maybe he did, and the Jap ain’t telling us. We do know he’s carrying a gun, and he knows how to use it.”

“I’d like to talk to Yogan.”

“If you think it’ll do you any good. Last I saw of him he was in the bunkhouse.”

He pointed between the oaks to an old adobe which stood on the edge of the groves. Behind us, the sound of an approaching car floated over the housetop.

“Excuse me, Mr. Carmichael,” Zinnie said. “That must be my husband.”

Walking quickly, she disappeared around the side of the house. Carmichael pulled his gun and trotted after her. I followed along, around the attached greenhouse which flanked the side of the house.

A silver-gray Jaguar stopped behind the Buick convertible in the driveway. Running across the lawn toward the sports car, under the towering sky, Zinnie looked like a little puppet, black and white and gold, jerked across green baize. The big man who got out of the car slowed her with a gesture of his hand. She looked back at me and the deputy, stumbling a little on her heels, and assumed an awkward noncommittal pose.

      T
HE
driver of the Jaguar had dressed himself to match it. He had on gray flannels, gray suede shoes, a gray silk shirt, a gray tie with a metallic sheen. In striking contrast, his face had the polished brown finish of hand-rubbed wood. Even at a distance, I could see he used it as an actor might. He was conscious of planes and angles, and the way his white teeth flashed when he smiled. He turned his full smile on Zinnie.

I said to the deputy: “That wouldn’t be Jerry Hallman.”

“Naw. It’s some doctor from town.”

“Grantland?”

“I guess that’s his name.” He squinted at me sideways. “What kind of detective work do you do? Divorce?”

“I have.”

“Which one in the family hired you, anyway?”

I didn’t want to go into that, so I gave him a wise look and drifted away. Dr. Grantland and Zinnie were climbing the front steps. As she passed him in the doorway, Zinnie looked up into his face. She inclined her body so that her breast touched his arm. He put the same arm around her shoulders, turned her away from him, and propelled her into the house.

Without going out of my way to make a lot of noise, I mounted the veranda and approached the screen door. A carefully modulated male voice was saying:

“You’re acting like a wild woman. You don’t have to be so conspicuous.”

“I want to be. I want everyone to know.”

“Including Jerry?”

“Especially him.” Zinnie added illogically: “Anyway, he isn’t here.”

“He soon will be. I passed him on the way out. You should have seen the look he gave me.”

“He hates anybody to pass him.”

“No, there was more to it than that. Are you sure you haven’t told him about us?”

“I wouldn’t tell him the time of day.”

“What’s this about wanting everybody to know then?”

“I didn’t mean anything. Except that I love you.”

“Be quiet. Don’t even say it. You could throw everything away, just when I’ve got it practically made.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ll tell you afterwards. Or perhaps I won’t tell you at all. It’s working out, and that’s all you need to know. Anyway, it will work out, if you can act like a sensible human being.”

“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Then remember who you are, and who I am. I’m thinking about Martha. You should be, too.”

“Yes. I forget her sometimes, when I’m with you. Thank you for reminding me, Charlie.”

“Not Charlie. Doctor. Call me doctor.”

“Yes, Doctor.” She made the word sound erotic. “Kiss me once, Doctor. It’s been a long time.”

Having won his point, he became bland. “If you insist, Mrs. Hallman.”

She moaned. I walked to the end of the veranda, feeling a little let down because Zinnie’s vivacity hadn’t been for me. I lit a consolatory cigarette.

At the side of the house, childish laughter bubbled. I leaned on the railing and looked around the corner. Mildred and her niece were playing a game of catch with a tennisball. At least it was catch for Mildred, when Martha threw the ball anywhere near her. Mildred rolled the ball to the child, who scampered after it like a small utility in-fielder in fairy blue. For the first time since I’d met her, Mildred looked relaxed.

A gray-haired woman in a flowered dress was watching them from a chaise longue in the shade. She called out:

“Martha! You mustn’t get overtired. And keep your dress clean.”

Mildred turned on the older woman: “Let her get dirty if she likes.”

But the spell of the game was broken. Smiling a perverse little smile, the child picked up the ball and threw it over the picket fence that surrounded the lawn. It bounced out of sight among the orange trees.

The woman on the chaise longue raised her voice again:

“Now look what you’ve done, you naughty girl—you’ve gone and lost the ball.”

“Naughty girl,” the child repeated shrilly, and began to chant: “Martha’s a naughty girl, Martha’s a naughty girl.”

“You’re not, you’re a nice girl,” Mildred said. “The ball isn’t lost. I’ll find it.”

She started for the gate in the picket fence. I opened my mouth to warn her not to go into the trees. But something was going on in the driveway behind me. Car wheels crunched in the ground, and slid to a stop. I turned and saw that it was a new lavender Cadillac with gold trim.

The man who got out of the driver’s seat was wearing fuzzy tweeds. His hair and eyes had the same coloring as Carl, but he was older, fatter, shorter. Instead of hospital pallor, his face was full of angry blood.

Zinnie came out on the veranda to meet him. Unfortunately her lipstick was smeared. Her eyes looked feverish.

“Jerry, thank God you’re here!” The dramatic note sounded wrong, and she lowered her voice: “I’ve been worried sick. Where on earth have you been all day?”

He stumped up the steps and faced her, not quite as tall as she was on her heels. “I haven’t been gone all day. I drove down to see Brockley at the hospital. Somebody had to give him the bawling-out he had coming to him. I told him what I thought of the loose way they run that place.”

“Was that wise, dear?”

“It was some satisfaction, anyway. These bloody doctors! They take the public’s money and—” He jerked a thumb toward Grantland’s car: “Speaking of doctors, what’s he doing here? Is somebody sick?”

“I thought you knew, about Carl. Didn’t Ostie stop you at the road?”

“I saw his car there, he wasn’t in it. What about Carl?”

“He’s on the ranch, carrying a gun.” Zinnie saw the shock on her husband’s face, and repeated: “I thought you knew. I thought that’s why you were staying away, because you’re afraid of Carl.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” he said, on a rising note.

“You were, the day he left here. And you should be, after the things he said to you.” She added, with unconscious
cruelty, perhaps not entirely unconscious: “I believe he wants to kill you, Jerry.”

His hands clutched his stomach, as though she’d struck him a physical blow there. They doubled into fists.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You and Charlie Grantland?”

The screen door rattled. Grantland came out on cue. He said with false joviality: “I
thought
I heard someone taking my name in vain. How are you, Mr. Hallman?”

Jerry Hallman ignored him. He said to his wife: “I asked you a simple question. What’s he doing here?”

“I’ll give you a simple answer. I had no man around I could trust to take Martha into town. So I called Dr. Grantland to chauffeur her. Martha is used to him.”

Grantland had come up beside her. She turned and gave him a little smile, her smudged mouth doubling its meaning. Of the three, she and Grantland formed the paired unit. Her husband was the one who stood alone. As if he couldn’t bear that loneliness, he turned on his heel, walked stiffly down the veranda steps, and disappeared through the front door of the greenhouse.

Grantland took a gray handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped Zinnie’s mouth. The center of her body swayed toward him.

“Don’t,” he said urgently. “He knows already. You must have told him.”

“I asked him for a divorce—you know that—and he’s not a complete fool. Anyway, what does it matter?” She had the false assurance, or abandon, of a woman who has made a sexual commitment and swung her whole life from it like a trapeze. “Maybe Carl will kill him.”

“Be quiet, Zin! Don’t even think it—!”

His voice broke off. Her gaze had moved across me as he spoke, and telegraphed my presence to him. He turned on his toes like a dancer. The blood seeped out from underneath
his tan. He might have been a beady-eyed old man with jaundice. Then he pulled himself together and smiled—a downward-turning smile but a confident one. It was unsettling to see a man’s face change so rapidly and radically.

I threw away the butt of my cigarette, which seemed to have lasted for a long time, and smiled back at him. Felt from inside, like a rubber Halloween mask, my smile was a stiff grimace. Jerry Hallman relieved my embarrassment, if that is what I was feeling. He came hustling out of the greenhouse with a pair of shears in his hand, a dull blotched look on his face.

Zinnie saw him, and backed against the wall. “Charlie! Look out!”