A Purple Place for Dying (7 page)

She got out of the chair and edged past me and walked to the table. She picked a book up and dropped it and turned, leaning against the table.

"Why would anyone want to kill him? I can't believe you. You know that, don't you? I just can't believe you."

"About Mona?"

"Y-Yes, I can believe that. She was so… definite. She could make enemies. But John is such a mild man, really. With a wry little sense of fun."

"How in the world did they meet?"

"They met just about a year ago. Her husband came to a dinner party at the president's home. We were invited. Mr. Yeoman had given some money to a scholarship fund. John was seated next to Mrs. Yeoman. She pretended to have some interest in contemporary philosophy. They were talking Heidegger, Broad, Ryle, Sartre, Camus. She was one of those clever people who know just what to say about something they know nothing about. And she had met Camus in Paris years ago. John is at his best when the conversation is in his field. He can say very challenging things. She started driving down every week to audit his Friday seminar in the Philosophy of Democracy, paid avid attention, kept a very detailed notebook, did a lot of outside reading. That's the way it started. It was a vicious smoke screen of course, all that manufactured interest. He was just a new species to her. I told him to be very careful. She didn't seem to be in any great hurry. She didn't seduce him until last April. He came blundering in with some fantastic story about her car breaking down. She used to come right here to pick him up. Shamelessly. It was really pathetic. He didn't stand a chance, of course. She was a very clever and determined woman. And bored, I expect."

"Do you have anyone to stay with you, Isobel? Or anyone you can stay with?"

"No. I don't need anything like that."

"I don't think you should phone that Sheriff."

"Because it doesn't mean enough that his kit should be here?"

"Partly that. But this whole thing has been… organized pretty well. I want to find out as much as I can. Quietly. I think that if I start making any noise, I could end up working on the county roads. Whatever happened to Mona and your brother, it is one factor in something else. There are a lot of things stirring around under the surface."

"But what if my brother needs help!"

She was close to the edge again. "Isobel, the only way we can force action to get help to him is to prove that they did not take that plane yesterday. People are too damned willing to believe they did, even her husband. I think the Sheriff may be a little opportunistic, but I don't think he's corrupt. I'm pressuring him to look further into my story of Mona's death. If he comes up with something, then it should be evident that neither of them took that feeder flight."

"But how long will that take you! He could be in some…"

I saw that I wasn't going to be able to quiet her down. I would have to move her around. "I want to go back to the Carson Airport. I want to poke around a little. You have to get that car, don't you? Why don't you come along?"

She hesitated and gave an abrupt nod. "Give me time to change."

She locked the place, after checking to be certain she had her set of car keys. She had changed to a gray skirt in a loose weave. It looked a little too big for her. She wore a yellow cotton blouse, and brought a sweater along. She had an old lady purse, dark gray leather, well worn and very sedate. She wore nylons and black shiny moccasins. And she wore big wraparound sun glasses, tinted almost black. With her eyes obscured, her face seemed totally without expression, and smaller than before.

She directed me down into the village and told me where to turn. She sat erect and remote, purse in her lap, hands folded over the clasp. Violence leaves such vulnerable victims.

"Where in the Bahamas?"

"What? Oh, I don't think you'd know it. It was just about a mile long and about three hundred yards wide. It was near Old Mallet Cay."

"South of the Joulters. On the banks, a little way in from the Tongue of the Ocean. It's very tricky water there. Plenty of coral heads."

"Then you do know it!" Her voice sounded younger.

"If it's the one I'm thinking of there's an old gray house there, pretty well storm-battered, near a nice little protected anchorage. Most of the island is volcanic rock. The house faces west."

"That's it!"

"Did you sell it?"

"We never owned it. My father got it on a lease from the crown. Ninety-nine years. You can't sell those leases, you know. They can be passed along to the direct heirs, and when the time is up they revert. John and I have talked about going back one day."

"Was there no inheritance?"

"Mother's money was just for her lifetime. And it wasn't a big income, really. My father was always in total confusion about taxes. And he made fantastic investments. After everything was settled, John and I got a little over nine hundred dollars apiece. You know, I loved that island. There's a beach and a bar behind it. I can remember how lovely it was in the moonlight. The beach was like snow. We all used to get as brown as Bahamians."

"You don't look as if you'd ever been in the sun."

"I think I got too much of it when I was a child. My lips are allergic now. They puff up and break out in sores. I'd love nothing better than to just… lay in the sun and bake until the world gets far away"

"How long since you've tried?"

"Years."

"They have some new things now. You know, miracles of chemistry. There's a paste that screens out every kind of ray."

"Really?"

"Guaranteed."

"Could you get me some? Would you know what to ask for?"

"Of course."

"This may sound… perfectly idiotic to you. But… if you are right… if some horrible thing has happened to John, it would be easier for me to bear it if I could just bake myself all loose and weak and far away. It's like a drug for me. Mr. McGee, when did you last see that house?"

"Two years ago, in the spring."

"Did you go ashore?"

"No. But I put the glasses on it. It's all shuttered. It looks sound."

"I guess it would be a great deal of work to make it livable again, clean out the drains and cisterns and all that. We had a sturdy old boat, a dear thing. Four hours to New Providence, and that was the great event, picking the wind and weather, leaving when it was just bright enough to see."

Her voice was lighter and more flexible when she talked of that, her posture. more relaxed. I made note of it. It could make her easier to quiet down, knowing that much about her.

I took the long tilted curves of the mountain country, working up, and then through a pass and down the far side to a plateau country, to fenced areas where there was a coarse graygreen grass, to open land of mesquite, sagebrush, cactus. This was State Road 202, less traveled than 100, a little narrower and older.

There were a few towns built in the Spanish pattern. The road curved around them, avoiding the old route of narrow cobbled streets constricted by walls, and on the newer road were the cafes and garages, small pastures of automobiles most brutally slain.

As we neared Carson I could see, far beyond it, the mountains I remembered from the flight in, purpled with distance, streaked with high marks of canyon snow. The airport was on the north side of town. The terminal was new and small, pale fabricated stone and tinted glass panels.

There was free parking in lots on either side of the building. A quarter mile away was a shabby sun-weathered hangar and private service area, where a score of small bright planes were staked out in formal array on the dusty hardpan. There were about forty cars parked in the two lots. A little cream and red plane was shooting landings.

We arrived at quarter after noon.

"I don't see our car," she said.

"What is it?"

"It's a dark red DeSoto. I don't know what year. It's quite old. No, it isn't here anywhere. But the Sheriff said it would be here. I wonder if John could have…"

"Let's see what we can find out," I said, and parked. We walked out of sun heat into the airconditioned chill of the terminal. A man stood just inside the door. He had a chauffeur hat, a big belly, a damp cigar end, little gray pebbles for eyes, and an air of petty authority.

I started to walk by him, and then stopped and went back and said, "Pardon me. I was supposed to pick up a car off the lot out there, an old maroon DeSoto. It was left there yesterday or the day before. Would you know anything about it?"

He looked me over and moved the cigar to the other corner of his mouth. "It was took off, mister."

"What do you mean?"

"What I said. They put a hook on it and took it off. Maybe about ten this morning. It was a city rig, so I'd guess it went down to the car pound, like they do for parking wrong, or a recovery of something stole."

It bothered her. She had more questions than I could answer. I took a dime into a pay booth while she stared at me through the glass, her mouth tight, her eyes invisible behind the dark lenses. The city police switchboard passed me along to one man who transferred the call to another man, who said that the county had requested they pick up the car and hold it.

"I'd say it was a case they want to check it over," he said, "because the way the request came through, it was to keep our hands off it, so we sent a man along with the city wrecker to put it in gear and so on without messing up anything they maybe are looking for. It ain't been checked out yet, and you got any questions about releasing it, what you do is check with the Sheriff's department."

I folded the door back and left the booth and told Isobel.

"What does it mean?" she asked. "Why would they do that?"

"Maybe they're willing to admit there could be two versions of what happened. In front of Yeoman last night, this was one of the things I said the Sheriff should be doing. So he's doing it. But it's a way out chance. Fingerprints work fine on television. But, on a rough guess, they get a usable print off one out of every hundred guns, one out of every twenty cars. A man adjusts the rear view mirror by hand, he can leave a good imprint on the back of the mirror, if the surface is smooth enough. Sometimes a thumb print on the front of the glove compartment. It is usually more meaningful to find a car wiped clean, steering wheel and door handles. No smudged prints and broken prints. Then that has some significance."

She peered up at me, dark head tilted. "It's some kind of a strange logic, isn't it? If he didn't go off with her, and you say he couldn't have, then there would be no point in his bringing the car here."

"Let's get some lunch."

There was a lunch counter in a corner of the terminal. After we had ordered, I left her there on the stool and went and looked at the boards. Westways had the one fifteen to El Paso, with intermediate stops. The flight originated three more stops north. It was due through again today.

At close range the ticket man was too old for his butchcut.

"On your flight two oh three, would that be the same flight crew as yesterday?"

"I wouldn't know. Why?"

"Could it be?"

"I guess it could be. The rotation system is too complicated for me to follow."

"Will the flight crew come into the terminal?"

"It's just five minutes here. They're on time. They should be in at ten after one."

I went back to my cooling hamburg. I told her what I had in mind. I told her I wished I'd asked for a picture of her brother. She took a billfold from her gray purse. She took a color snapshot from a compartment in it. She and her brother were standing squinting and smiling in the sunlight, with one of the campus buildings behind them. He wore a pale suit and his necktie was crooked. She said the picture was over a year old. John Webb was tall, narrow, pallid, hollow-chested. He had an untidy shock of black hair. His smile was pleasant. He did not look like the sort of man Mona would have been interested in. He looked vague and anxious to please. But you can never tell. Maybe, after Cube and Jass, she'd had her fill of forceful males.

The two-engine plane came in a few minutes early. There were three or four to get off, three or four to get on. They wheeled the steps up to the door forward of the wing. I followed the passengers up. The smiling stewardess held out her hand for my ticket. The smile was habitual. The uniform was navy blue and pink. She was a taffy blonde, a little too hefty for her skirt, her lip dewed with the sudden perspiration of the heat at ground level.

"I'm not a passenger," I said. "I just wondered if you had this flight yesterday."

"Yes sir?"

I showed her the picture. "Do you remember this man? Tall and dark and thin. He was with a sizeable blonde. They both wore sun glasses. They got on here and went to the end of the line."

"Yes, I remember that couple."

"This was the man?"

"I don't know. I thought the man looked… tougher than this man somehow. I remember them because I had… well, not trouble, really. We had a light load. They had a bottle. We're not supposed to permit that. But you know how it is. There was an old lady in front of them. She complained to me. She said they were talking dirty. I moved her to another seat. They weren't being particularly loud." She looked at her watch.

"Do you remember how they were dressed? Or anything else in particular about them?"

"She wore a pale blue seersucker suit and red sandals with high heels, and she had a big red purse. That's where the bottle was. I don't remember about him. Dark slacks and a light jacket, I think. He had a long stringy neck and some little scars here, below his ear. Let me see, they were on the port side, so they would be on the right side of his neck. Those operations they do for glands. Sir, I'm sorry but I have to…"

"Thank you very much. What's your name?"

"Houser. Madeline Houser."

I went back down the steps. They were pulled away, the door dogged tight. As I walked back to the terminal, they turned to taxi and the air blast pressed against my back, hurrying me along, kicking up spirals of dust and gum wrappers.

Isobel was waiting inside the door. I took her over to the lounge chairs facing the tinted glass and the runways and sat beside her and told her what I had learned from Madeline.

She shook her head sadly, her mouth puckering. "It wasn't John. Nothing fits. No scars on his neck. He wouldn't talk that way. Where is he? What happened to him? Will you tell the police what that stewardess said?"

"Let me keep this picture for a while."

"Certainly. Should I report John as missing? Won't that stir something up?"

"We should be more certain just what we're going to stir up."

She hit the arm of the chair with her fist. "Why are you so hesitant? Certainly this is a police matter now. Maybe I should phone the newspapers. Damn it, we can't just sit here!"

"It's better than rushing off in all directions."

"He could be tied up somewhere, all alone, sick.

"So if you start all the sirens screaming, Isobel, anybody who knows anything about it is going to dig a hole and crawl in and wait it out. We need to know more. We need to get some small idea of who did it, who would benefit, why it was done. All this wasn't just an impulse. It has to make some kind of sense. I want to talk to the lawyer she retained. He's from outside the county. Belasco. But I don't know his name."

"I know his name. Wait a moment. I'll remember it. I heard John mention it when he talked to Mona on the phone. It begins with an M. An Italian name. Mazzari. Yes, that's it."

"Where's Belasco?"

"Not too far from here. Another twenty miles east, I think."