The Zebra-Striped Hearse (25 page)

“Mona?”

“She was a big chesty blonde.”

“That’s Ray’s girl, Mona Sutherland. And the coat is his, too. I know it well. His father gave it to him the last time Ray visited him, so you see you’ve made a mistake. It’s a different coat entirely.”

“Now tell me where Ray really got it, Mrs. Buzzell.”

The manifestations of mother love are unpredictable. She threw her empty glass at my head. It missed me and smashed on the flagstones. Then she retreated into the house, slamming the door behind her.

I got into my car and sat. The sun was almost down, a narrowing red lozenge on the cloud-streaked horizon. It slipped out of sight. The whole western sky became smoky red, as if the sun had touched off fires on the far side of the world.

After a while the front door opened. The lady appeared with a fresh glass in her hand.

“I’ve just been talking to my ex on the long-distance telephone. He’ll back me up about the coat.”

“Bully for him.”

She looked at the glass in her hand as if she was considering throwing it, too. But it had liquor in it.

“What right have you got sitting on my property? Get off my property!”

I turned the car and drove up past her mailbox and parked at the roadside and watched the horizontal fires die out and the dark come on. The sky was crowded with stars when the woman came out again. She plodded up the slope and balanced her teetering weight against the mailbox.

“I’m smasherooed.”

I got out and approached her. “I told you to pour it out.”

“I couldn’t do that to good gin. It’s been my dearest friend and beloved companion for lo these many yea-hears.” She reached for me like a blind woman. I’m frightened.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, and I don’t believe your son is involved in this murder. But I have to know where he got the tweed topcoat. His father had nothing to do with it, did he?”

“No. Ray told me he found it.”

“Where?”

“On the beach, he said.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About two months. He brought it home and brushed the sand out of it. That’s why I got so frightened, on account of the timing. You said two months. That’s why I lied to you.”

She was leaning on me heavily, one hand on my shoulder, the other clutching my upper arm. I let her lean.

“Ray couldn’t murder anyone,” she said. “He’s a little hard to regiment but he’s not a bad boy really. And he’s so
young.”

“He’s not a murder suspect, Mrs. Buzzell. He’s a witness, and the coat is evidence. How he got it may be significant But I can’t establish that without talking to him. You must have some idea where I can find him.”

“He did say something this morning—something about spending the night at Zuma. I know he took along some things to cook. But what he says and what he actually does are often two different things. I can’t keep track of him any more. He needs a father.”

She was talking into the front of my coat, and her grip had tightened on me. I held her for a bit, because she needed
holding, until a car came up the road and flashed its headlights on her wet startled face.

The striped hearse was standing empty among other cars off the highway above Zuma. I parked behind it and went down to the beach to search for its owner. Bonfires were scattered along the shore, like the bivouacs of nomad tribes or nuclear war survivors. The tide was high and the breakers loomed up marbled black and fell white out of oceanic darkness.

Six young people were huddled under blankets around one of the fires. I recognized them: one of the girls was wearing the brown tweed coat. They paid no attention when I approached. I was an apparition from the adult world. If they pretended I wasn’t there, I would probably go away like all the other adults.

“I’m looking for Ray Buzzell.”

One of the boys cupped his hand behind his ear and said: “Hey?”

He was an overgrown seventeen- or eighteen-year-old with heavy masculine features unfocused by any meaning in his eyes. In spite of his peroxided hair, he looked like an Indian in the red firelight.

“Ray Buzzell,” I repeated.

“Never heard of him.” He glanced around at the others. “Anybody ever hear of a Ray Buzzell?”

“I
never heard of a Ray Buzzell,” the girl in the coat said. “I knew a man named Heliogabalus Rexford Buzzell. He had a long grey beard and he died some years ago of bubonic plague.”

Everybody laughed except me and the girl. I said to the boy: “You’re Ray, aren’t you?”

“Depends who you are.” He rose in a sudden single movement, shedding his blanket. The three other boys rose, too. “You fuzz?”

“You’re getting warm, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid.”

“What do you want me to call you?”

“Anything but kid.”

“All right, Mr. Buzzell. I have some questions to ask you, about the coat Miss Sutherland is wearing.”

“Who you been talking to? How come you know our names?”

He took a step toward me, his bare feet noiseless in the sand. His little comitatus grouped themselves behind him. They crossed their arms on their chests to emphasize their muscles, and the red firelight flickered on their biceps.

With a little judo I thought I could handle all eight of their biceps, but I didn’t want to hurt them. I was an emissary from the adult camp. I flashed the special-deputy’s badge which I carried as a souvenir of an old trouble on the San Pedro docks.

“I’ve been talking to your mother, among other people. She said you found the coat on the beach.”

“Never believe her,” he said with one eye on the girls. “Never believe a mother.”

“Where did you get it then?”

“I wove it underwater out of sea lettuce. I’m very clever with my hands.” He wiggled his fingers at me.

“I wouldn’t go on playing this for laughs, Buzzell. It’s a serious matter. Have you ever been in Citrus Junction?”

“I guess I passed through.”

“Did you stop over long enough to kill and bury a man?”

“Bury a man?” He was appalled.

“His name was Quincy Ralph Simpson. He was found buried in Citrus Junction last week, with an icepick wound in his heart. Did you know him?”

“I never heard of him, honest. Besides, we’ve had the coat for a couple of months.” His voice had regressed five years, and sounded as though it was changing all over again. He turned to the girl. “Isn’t that right, Mona?”

She nodded. Her sea-lion eyes were wide and scared. With scrabbling fingers she unbuttoned the coat and flung it off. I
held out my hands for it. Ray Buzzell picked it up and gave it to me. His movements had lost their certainty.

The coat was heavy, with matted fibers that smelled of the sea. I folded it over my arm.

“Where did you get it, Ray?”

“On the beach, like Moth—like the old lady said. It was salvage, like. I’m always living off the beach, picking up salvage and jetsam. Isn’t that right, Mona?”

She nodded, still without breaking silence.

His voice rushed on in an adolescent spate: “It was soaked through, and there were stones in the pockets, like somebody chunked it in the drink to get rid of it. But there was a strong tide running, and the waves washed it up on the beach. It was still in pretty good condition, this Harris tweed is indestructible, so I decided to dry it out and keep it. It was like salvage. Mona wears it mostly—she’s the one that gets cold.”

She was shivering in her bathing suit now, close by the fire. The other girl draped a plaid shirt over her shoulders. The boys were standing around desultorily, like figures relaxing out of a battle frieze.

“Can you name the beach?”

“I don’t remember. We go to a lot of beaches.”

“I know which one it was,” Mona said. “It was the day we had the six-point-five and I was scared to go out in them and you all said I was chicken.
You
know,” she said to the others, “that little private beach above Malibu where they have the shrimp joint across the highway.”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “We ate there the other day. Crummy joint.”

“I saw you there the other day,” I said. “Now let’s see if we can pin down the date you found the coat.”

“I don’t see how. That was a long time ago, a couple months.”

The girl rose and touched his arm. “What about the tide tables, Raybuzz?”

“What about them?”

“We had a six-point-five tide that day. We haven’t had many this year. You’ve got the tide tables in the car, haven’t you?”

“I guess so.”

The three of us went up the beach to the zebra-striped hearse. Ray found the dog-eared booklet, and Mona scanned it under the dashboard lights.

“It was May the nineteenth,” she said positively. “It couldn’t have been any other day.”

I thanked her. I thanked them both, but she was the one with the brains. As I drove back toward Los Angeles, I wondered what Mona was doing on the beach. Perhaps if I met her father or her mother I could stop wondering.

T
HE
B
LACKWELL HOUSE
was dark. I pressed the bell push, and the chimes inside gave out a lonely tinkling. I waited and rang again and waited and rang and waited.

Eventually I heard footsteps inside. The veranda light went on over my head, and the little maid looked out at me sleepily. She was out of uniform and out of sorts.

“What do
you
want?”

“Are the Blackwells in?”

“She is. He isn’t.”

“Tell her Mr. Archer would like to speak to her.”

“I can’t do that. She’s in bed asleep. I was asleep myself.” She yawned in my face, and hugged her rayon bathrobe more closely around her.

“You go to bed early, Letty.”

“I had to get
up
early this morning, so I thought I might as well catch up on my rest. Mrs. Blackwell took some sleeping
pills and left strict orders not to be disturbed She went to bed right after dinner.”

“Is Mrs. Blackwell all right?”

“She said she had a blinding headache but she gets those from time to time.”

“How many sleeping pills did she take?”

“A couple.”

“What kind?”

“The red kind. Why?”

“Nothing. Where’s the lord and master?”

“He left early this morning. He had a phone call, about Miss Harriet, and he made me get up and make breakfast for him. It isn’t a regular part of my duties but the cook sleeps out—”

I cut in on her explanations: “Do you know where he is now?”

“He went up to Tahoe to help them search for her body. That’s where the phone call was from.”

“They haven’t found her, then?”

“No. What do you think happened to her?”

“I think she’s in the lake.”

“That’s what he said.” She stepped outside, partly closing the door behind her. “He was in bad shape at breakfast. He couldn’t eat he was so broken up. I didn’t think he should go off there by himself. But he wouldn’t let me wake up Mrs. Blackwell, and what could I do?”

She crossed the veranda and looked up at the stars. She sighed, and laid a hand on her round pink rayon bosom.

“How long have you been working for the Blackwells?”

“Two months. It seems like longer. I mean with all the trouble in the house.”

“Trouble between Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell?”

“They’ve had their share. But it don’t behoove me to talk about it.”

“Don’t they get along?”

“They get along as well as most, I guess. A-course they’ve
only been married eight or nine months. It’s the long pull that counts, my daddy says, and the Colonel must be twenty years older than her.”

“Is that an issue between the Blackwells?”

“No, I don’t mean that. Only it makes you wonder why she married him. Mrs. Blackwell may have her faults, but she’s not the gold-digging type.”

“I’m interested in what you think of her and her faults.”

“I don’t talk behind people’s backs,” she said with some spirit. “Mrs. Blackwell treats me good, and I try to treat her good back. She’s a nice lady to work for. He isn’t so bad either.”

“Did they take you up to Tahoe in May?”

“That was before I started with them. Just my luck. They were talking about going up again in September, but it’s probably all off now. They wouldn’t want to stay in the lodge so soon after what happened there. I wouldn’t want to myself.”

“Were you fond of Harriet?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I never saw much of her. But I felt kind of sorry for her, even before this happened. She was a real sad cookie, even with all that money. It’s too bad she had to die before she had any happiness in life. She put on a pretty good front, but you ought to seen the crying tantrums she threw in the privacy of her own room. My mother is a practical nurse, and I tried to calm her down a couple of times.”

“What was she crying about?”

“Nobody loved her, she said. She said she was ugly. I told her she had a real nice figure and other attractive features, but she couldn’t see it. This was in June, before she went to Mexico. It’s easy to understand why she was such a pushover for that artist guy—the one with all the names that murdered her.” She looked at the stars again, and coughed at their chilliness. “I think I’m catching cold. I better get back to bed. You never can tell when they’ll get you up around here.”

She went back into the dark house. I went down the hill
and turned left on Sunset toward my office. I drove automatically in the light evening traffic. My mind was sifting the facts I’d scraped together, the facts and the semi-facts and the semi-demi-semi-facts. One of the semi-facts had become a certainty since I’d learned that the tweed coat had been found near the Blackwells’ beach house: the Blackwell case and the Dolly Campion case and the Ralph Simpson case were parts of one another, Dolly and Ralph and probably Harriet had died by the same hand, and the coat could be used to identify the hand.

I spread it out on the desk in my office and looked at it under the light. The leather buttons were identical with the one Mungan had shown me. Where the top one had been pulled off there were some strands of broken thread corresponding with the threads attached to Mungan’s button. I had no doubt that an identification man with a microscope could tie that button and this coat together.