The Wycherly Woman (24 page)

“That’s right. Take the road to Painted Cove. You know these parts?”

“I have a summer cottage about halfway between here and Terranova.”

“Thought I reckernized your physog.”

I gave the old man the quarter, and we drove down the highway. The road to Painted Cove was rutted dirt eked out here and there with gravel. It wound interminably through redwood forest. The trees hung over us like pyramids held up by rough brown columns. Then there were lights beyond them.

The road unwound onto a mesa which broke off suddenly in a sheer sea cliff. A heavy tow truck had been backed to its edge. Several cars, official and unofficial, were parked near
it, and twelve or fifteen people were standing rather aimlessly around. The crane on the back of the big truck stuck out over the cliff edge like a gallows, with a cable hanging from it.

We walked towards it across the uneven ground. The truck had the legend, Gayley’s Garage, painted on the door of the cab. The only active man in sight was a uniformed deputy handling a searchlight on the rear end of the truck-bed. Its beam fell down the basalt face of the cliff and shone on the moving water thirty-five or forty feet below. A black head like a seal’s broke the surface; I caught the gleam of a diving mask. The diver submerged again.

Trevor reached up and touched the deputy’s leg. “Did you get the car out, officer?”

The man turned on him fiercely. “You don’t see it, do you? Stand back from the edge.”

Trevor stepped back, and almost lost his balance. I took his arm. His muscles were like straining wood; a steady tremor ran through them under my fingers. I tried to pull him away. He wouldn’t budge. He stood sighting down the cable at the water, trying to penetrate its black-and-silver surface.

A broad old man came up to us. He had a face like carved redwood burl under his wide-brimmed hat.

“Mr. Trevor!”

He offered Trevor his hand, and after a moment of complete blankness Trevor took it: “How are you, Sheriff?”

“Tolerably well. I’m sorry to drag you away from home on an errand like this.”

“It can’t be helped. You didn’t get the car out?”

“Not yet. It’s wedged between two boulders and filled with sand. I’m commencing to think it’ll take a sky-hook to yank her.”

“Is there anyone in it?”

“There was.”

“What do you mean, there was?”

“We got her out of there and brought her up a couple hours ago.” He glanced down at the sea as if it was his personal enemy. “What was left of her.”

“My niece?”

“It sure looks like it, Mr. Trevor. It’s her car, and she was in it. I never knew the little lady myself.”

Trevor thrust his peaked face towards him. “Where is she?”

“Over there.”

The sheriff pointed with a solemn arm towards a covered thing on the ground in the furthest zone of light. I saw as we moved towards it that it was a blanket-wrapped body strapped to a stretcher. The Sheriff said to Trevor:

“If you feel up to looking at her, I’d sure appreciate it. We haven’t got a positive identification.”

“Of course.”

“It won’t be nice. She’s been in the water for a couple of months.”

“Don’t beat around the bush. Show her to me.”

The Sheriff uncovered her face and turned his flashlight on it. The sea-change she had undergone had aged her rapidly and horribly. She was beaten and bloated and ravaged. A blur of tears stung my eyes, and a blur of anger. The people stood around in absolute silence.

“It’s Phoebe,” Trevor said.

His face was bone-white, bone-hard. He looked around helplessly, as if he could feel the early shocks of an earthquake that was going to topple the cliff. The shocks went through him visibly. He fell to his knees beside her. I thought he was trying to pray. But his body continued its loose downward movement until his head struck the earth.

He rolled onto his back, his upturned face turning blue, his white teeth shining in it. I kneeled beside him, slipped his tie, unbuttoned his button-down collar. He forced out words:

“Digitalis. Right coat pocket.”

I found the bottle and gave him a capsule from it, returning it to his pocket. He said through grinning teeth:

“Thanks. Bad one. Oxygen.”

I touched his left breast. His heart was pounding like the dull random blows of doom. The Sheriff bent over us, his jowls hanging out from the bone structures of his face:

“Cardiac?”

“Yes,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought him here.”

“I better rush him into Terranova Hospital. We might as well fold up this operation for tonight.”

He brought his car to Trevor. We helped him in. The storm of pain had gone through him and left him terribly slack.

“Good luck,” I said.

He nodded and tried to smile. The Sheriff drove him away.

I
WENT BACK
to the cliff. The deputy on the truck-bed was switching his searchlight off and on. Down below, the black seal head broke water, and the diver turned his masked face up into the eye of the light. The deputy made scooping motions at him.

A man wearing overalls over a red shirt climbed into the cab of the truck and started the motor. Slowly, the winch began to wind in the cable. It lifted the black-suited diver from the water. With both hands grasping the loop at the end of the cable, he walked up the cliff like a space man liberated from gravity. Some of the bystanders clapped as he stepped over the edge.

I saw when he took off his mask that he was a boy of eighteen or nineteen. He reminded me of Bobby Doncaster.
He was very big for his age, with swimmer’s shoulders exaggerated by his thick rubber suit. An aqualung was strapped to his back. A canvas bag, a long sheath knife, and a miniature crowbar swung from a web belt around his waist.

The man in overalls got out of the truck and helped him remove his aqualung and other gear. He growled at the boy in pride:

“Have you had your fill of the water for once?”

“Can’t say I did, Dad.”

The boy wasn’t breathing hard. He didn’t even look cold. He took off his flippers and swaggered around a little in his bare feet. The deputy interrupted his promenade:

“Did you get the trunk open, Sam?”

“Yep. There was nothing in it but some tools. I didn’t bother to bring ‘em up.”

“What about the registration slip?”

“I couldn’t find any sign of it. That doesn’t mean a thing, though. The wave-action down there is pretty terrific.”

I said: “It’s a green Volkswagen, isn’t it?”

“Used to be. Like I said, there’s a lot of wave action under the cliff. It sand-blasted most of the paint off of her already.”

“Are you the one who brought the body out?”

His face went sober. “Yessir.”

“Was she in the front seat or the back?”

“The back. She was wedged down on the floor between the front and back seats. I had to dig her out of the sand in there. The car’s chuck full of sand.”

“Did you notice her clothes?”

“She wasn’t wearing any,” the deputy said. “She was wrapped in a blanket. You got a special interest in her, mister?”

“I’m a private detective, and I’ve been looking for the girl for some time. I came here with her uncle, Carl Trevor.” I turned to the boy: “Do you mind if I ask you some more questions, Sam?”

Sam was willing, but his father intervened. “Let him get some dry clothes on first.”

He helped his son to pull off his rubber suit, revealing long woollen underwear; and brought him jeans and a sweater from the truck. Sam’s big moment was fading. The onlookers were straggling back to their cars. I followed the deputy to his:

“Do you have any witnesses to the accident?”

“No direct witnesses.” He added grimly: “It was no accident, mister.”

“I know that. Were there indirect witnesses?”

“Jack Gayley and his son think they saw the Volksie the same night it went over. Of course there’s lots of green Volksies on the roads.”

“Where did they see it?”

“Going past their place in Medicine Stone, headed this way. This was a couple of months ago, along about midnight. They were just closing up their station for the night, and this guy went by in the Volksie. The thing is both of them knew him, or so they claim. Young Sam says he even yelled hullo at him, but the guy didn’t stop. I guess he had his reasons, if he had the body in the back seat.”

“Who was he?”

“They don’t know his name, or where he’s from. He camped near Medicine Stone for a while last summer. Sam saw him at the beach a couple of times, and Jack says he was in their coffee shop more than once.”

“Could they give you a description?”

“Yeah. Sheriff Herman’s sending out an all-points on it. Young fellow with reddish hair, over six foot tall, good-looking, well-built.” He clucked. “The damnedest types are taking up murder these days. He probably got the girl in a jam and figured that this was a way out.”

“Yeah,” I said absently. The description fitted Bobby Doncaster, who had been at Medicine Stone the previous August.
He had met her here, I thought, and parted with her here.

The deputy looked into my face: “This ring any bells for you?”

It rang a dull dead tolling bell, but I denied it.

I caught the Gayleys before they took off in their tow-truck. They confirmed the deputy’s story of the red-headed boy in the green Volkswagen driving through their little town at midnight. The boy said:

“He was going like a bat out of hell.”

“Watch your language, Sam,” his father put in.

“Hell isn’t swearing.”

“It is in my book. You don’t want to get too big for your britches just because you can swim good under water.”

The boy grinned sheepishly. I said to both of them: “Are you certain of your identification?”

“Pretty certain,” the boy said. His father nodded, and he went on: “We still had our bright lights going, they shone on his face. I shouted something at him, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t even look sideways.”

“But it was definitely someone you knew?”

“I wouldn’t say I
knew
him. I saw him on the beach a couple of times last summer. We said hello.”

“When last summer?”

“I think it was in August.”

“Yeah,” Jack Gayley said. “It was in August, couple of weeks before Labor Day. I remember he came into the coffee shop.”

“You have a good memory.”

“A thing like this sharpens up the memory.”

“Did you ever see him with the girl?” I asked them.

The boy answered: “I did, once, at the beach. He was trying to teach her to use his surfboard. She wasn’t doing too good at it.”

“Where is the beach?”

“About a mile up that way.” He pointed north. “There’s a
reef that makes pretty good breakers for surfing. He was camped near there.”

“But you don’t know who he was, or where he came from?”

They both shook their heads.

“Can either of you pin down the date you saw him drive through?”

Jack Gayley leaned on the side of his truck and looked out across the moony sea. “Deputy Carstairs asked us that. It isn’t possible to place it for sure. I think it was about two months ago, give or take a week. What do you say, Sam?”

“Couple of months ago.”

“What were you doing when you saw him?”

“Getting ready to close up. We were late that night because of an emergency call we had. A guy from Canada had a blowout on the Terranova road and we had to go out about eleven o’clock and change his tire for him. He didn’t even have a jack in his car.”

“Anyway,” Sam said, “you sold him a new tire.”

“Do you keep a record of your tire sales, Mr. Gayley?”

“Sure, I keep duplicate sales slips on everything like that.”

“Dated?”

“Yessirree.”

“Let’s go back to your place and see if we can find that particular sales slip.”

He nodded briskly. “I get your point. Maybe we can put a date on it, after all. Let’s see, it was a General tube-type black-wall.”

I followed the tow-truck back to Medicine Stone and had two cups of coffee while the Gayleys went through their garage records. They found the sales slip; it was dated November 2.

“Does that mean anything to you?” Jack Gayley said.

“Yes. I don’t know what.”

Except that someone was lying. According to my witnesses, the cab-driver Nick Gallorini, the apartment manager Alex
Girston, and the late Stanley Quillan, Phoebe had been alive in San Mateo for at least another week. I was sure it wasn’t the Gayleys who were lying.

On my way through Terranova I stopped at the hospital, a flat-roofed one-storied building on the southern outskirts of town. The front door was unlocked, but there was nobody in the dim little lobby or behind the information desk. I started down a softly lighted corridor, and a nurse materialized in front of me.

She was a big woman who used her bigness to block my way. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m a friend of Mr. Carl Trevor’s. He was brought in tonight with a heart attack.”

“You can’t see him. Nobody can see him.”

“I know that. How is he doing?”

“As well as can be expected. He’s resting comfortably.”

“May I talk to his doctor?”

“Dr. Grundle has gone home. He’ll be called if there’s any change, I can assure you.”

“Is Dr. Grundle a heart specialist?”

She answered tartly: “I’m not authorized to discuss doctors’ qualifications.”

“You can give me a yes or no.”

“No then.” She made an impatient movement. “I can’t stand here talking. I’m the only R.N. on duty.”

She sailed away under full spinnaker. I found a phone booth in the lobby and a dime in my pocket, which I used to place a collect call to Trevor’s house in Woodside. His wife answered on the first ring:

“Of course I’ll take the call.” Her voice was a controlled screech. “What is it, Mr. Archer? What has happened?”

“The thing you were afraid of. Phoebe is dead. Your husband had to identify her, and it was a bad exp—”

Her voice cut in on mine: “He’s had another coronary. Is he dead?”

“Nothing like that. He’s in the Terranova hospital, doing all right. But you may want to get his own doctor to him.”