County Kill (8 page)

“Come in,” I said. “Don’t stand in the light.”

She hesitated — and came in. I closed the door.

She stood next to the doorway, her gaze carefully staying above my shoulders. “Did Juanita tell you anything?”

“As little as possible. She’s a cautious woman. She thinks she can get in touch with Skip tomorrow.”

“I see.” She licked her lower lip. “Did she say where Skip had been?”

“She didn’t. Do you know?”

She shook her head. “Do you think — I mean, there’s something dishonest going on, isn’t there?”

“A reasonable man would have to think so. I’m surprised you don’t know more than you do,” I said.

She looked startled. “Why should I?”

I didn’t answer.

But she must have read my mind. Because she said, “I can guess why you said that. We are burying him tomorrow. Until he went up to Berkeley, he was a good boy.” Her chin quivered and she glared at me. “It’s an anglo world. You don’t know about people like us.”

“I know about soft and innocent girls like you,” I said. “You were born to be suckered. Get smart now, Mary, before it’s too late. Skip Lund is shaping up as more of a bum every minute.”

She said fiercely, “That’s not true. In Beverly Hills he had a good business. And he’ll have one here when he has a wife who doesn’t need diamonds and sable and European vacations. He’s a fine, straight man!”

“He’s a hot-rodder who married money,” I said.

Wham!

What a right hand…. It hadn’t been a slap. It had been a fist, smack on my mouth, and blood ran down from my torn lower lip and I stared at her in untainted admiration.

She began to cry.

I had thought her soft, but in her neighborhood she couldn’t be soft and grow to her age looking as
she
did. She might not be soft, but I would lay odds she was pure.

“Your knuckle’s bleeding,” I said. “You’d better wash it.”

She shook her head, still crying.

I went into the bathroom and soaked a washcloth with soapy water.

I brought it out to her and said, “Please wash that hand. I apologize if I said something wrong. Would I have said it if I wasn’t worried about you?”

She sniffed and took the washcloth and went into the bathroom. I sat on the bed with a piece of Kleenex, wiping the blood from my lip.

When she came out again, she was no longer crying. I
grinned at her. “Juanita called you an angel, but that was quite a right you threw. Where did you learn that?”

“Where I live. From Johnny. I shouldn’t have hit you. May I wash it for you?”

“It’s nothing. Juanita told me Vogel gave you a bad time. Why?”

“Because I told him I would not sign a statement that Skip went to the shack with my brother.”

“Didn’t Skip tell you he was going with Johnny?”

She stared at me, her lips compressed.

“O.K., Mary. So you play it your way. If I said anything wrong, I’m sorry. Fight City Hall, marry a man who can’t settle down, hate angloes. Good night!”

“You’re angry,” she said softly. “You have a right to be. Good night.”

She went out and I went to the refrigerator to get an ice cube for my swelling lip. Uncle Brock … I had given Glenys quite a lecture for having the same faults I had. Uncle Brock…. To hell with all of them, and particularly the lambs.

The girl might be vulnerable, but her friends were not. I went to bed and tried to forget them all.

The morning dawned clear and bright. This was a beautiful town. With Jan gone from Beverly Hills, I might as well stay until Sunday and write it off as vacation. If Juanita came through, my mission would be completed today. Tomorrow I could use the pool and maybe even take Glenys to dinner.

And if Juanita didn’t come through …?

She wouldn’t be available until this afternoon; I could use the morning for my own research. But, first, some pancakes; there was a restaurant down the road that sold nothing else but all the kinds of pancakes there were.

A double order of French pancakes with boysenberry
syrup and whipped butter, fried eggs, and little pork sausages — I was halfway into this delicate repast when Sergeant Bernard Vogel walked in.

He stood just inside the doorway, giving us all the eye, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he hadn’t come in to eat.

When he spotted me, he came over. “Saw your car outside. Missed you at the motel. A few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“What good would it do to mind? Sit down, Sergeant.”

He sat down across from me and shook his head to the waitress who came over. He watched me carefully as he said, “Friend of yours got clobbered last night. Man named Lars Hovde.”

“He’s no friend of mine,” I said. “That’s why I came home early. He was heading for trouble, last I saw him.”

“Where was this?”

I looked at him levelly. “What did Hovde tell you?”

“He said it was a place called Chickie’s.”

“He told the truth.”

“And what were you doing there?”

“Having a beer. What happened to Hovde?”

“He was slugged a couple minutes after he left the place.” Vogel paused. “And knifed. He’s over at St. Mary’s Hospital right now.”

I said easily, “That’s a tough neighborhood. And Red’s got some unfortunate attitudes. Last night was the first time I ever saw the man and I hope it’s the last.”

Vogel’s face was grim and his voice deadly. “Let’s start over. What were you doing at Chickie’s?”

I finished the last half of my final sausage and slowly stirred a spoonful of sugar into my coffee. I said, “Sergeant, I have to respect some confidences if I’m to work effectively. The way it looks right now, I’ll be through here this afternoon.
I’ll come in and see you then. Fair enough?”

He shook his head.

“It’s the way I work,” I told him.

He shook his head again. “Not in this town.”

I kept the anger from my voice. “Your boss checked me and I checked out. I’m not one of those crummy divorce peepers, Sergeant.”

He studied me as though I were a bug. He was getting to me with his quiet contempt.

He stood up. “All right, you came in crying for co-operation and we were suckered. You ask another citizen of this town a single question and we’ll run you in and
really
sweat you. You got it?”

“Could I speak with the chief about that? You’re being unreasonable, Sergeant.”

“You’ve had your chance,” he said harshly. “We’ll be watching you again, Callahan.”

His voice had risen and customers at other tables glanced our way and a few of them stopped eating to stare.

Anger and embarrassment surged in me. Only his badge was keeping him vertical and conscious. I stared at my coffee ignoring him.

When I looked up again, he was gone.

The other customers were avoiding my glance; when I went to pay the cashier, she took my money and murmured a “thank you” while she carefully kept her eyes every place but on mine.

I went back to the motel, for lack of any better place to go. I was burning at Vogel’s officious and arrogant stupidity, but I wasn’t quite angry enough to disregard his warning.

I called the Lund home and asked for Glenys. I asked her, “Have you said anything to Bud about the possibility of his father’s being found today?”

“No. I thought I’d wait until I had something more definite from you.”

“You might not get anything more definite from me. Sergeant Vogel just told me to keep my nose out of the case.”

“Why would he do that? What happened?”

“He doesn’t think I’m working with the Department. He doesn’t understand my position.”

A silence, and then, “I’ll have June talk with Jim. Jim is not only a friend of Vogel’s; he knows Chief Harris very well.”

“O.K. You phone as soon as you get a clearance for me.”

“It might take some time,” she said. “Jim’s playing golf this morning.” A pause. “Why don’t you do what needs to be done and I’ll start working at this end?”

“All right,” I said. “Fine.”

I should have stayed with my original hunch. James Edward Ritter was not likely to come to the aid of anyone searching for Skip Lund. Ritter would prefer to have Skip missing forever.

T
HE WHARF WAS
an extension of the town’s main street and the flivver rattled over the wooden roadway at the legal five miles an hour. The Pacific had some blue in it again today; clouds hovered over the Channel Islands. Boats of all shapes and sizes bobbed in the light swell of the harbor.

I drove past the rambling sea-food restaurant and parked in a three-car space near a lunch stand. The morning’s pancakes were not digested yet, but I could always use a cup of coffee.

It was a four-stool stand, open on two sides. The man behind the counter was thin and tanned, wearing blue cotton trousers and a T Shirt.

I climbed onto a stool and said, “Just coffee. Black.”

He smiled, poured it, and set it on the counter.

“Quite a boat town, isn’t it?” I commented.

“Boats and horses,” he admitted. “You from down south?”

Los Angeles, he meant. That’s what they called it here. I nodded.

“How’s the smog?” he asked.

“Getting worse. How much boat could a man buy for forty thousand dollars?”

He yawned and scratched himself. “I suppose it would depend on how sharp he was at dickering. Some guys figure a thousand dollars a foot, but I could sure as hell do a lot better than
that
.”

“Could a forty-thousand-dollar boat make Mexico?”

“Hell, yes.” Then his eyes narrowed and he looked at me doubtfully. I thought I saw recognition there. He asked quietly, “Why do you want to know?”

I shrugged. “A friend of mine bought one. I was just wondering.”

His face was blank. “This friend got a name?”

“Warren Temple Lund the Second,” I said.

“Skip,” he said quietly. “You’re a cop, huh? I should have known, the size of you.”

“A private investigator,” I said, “working for Skip’s son. I’m not getting paid and I can keep a secret if it doesn’t violate the law.”

He nodded. “I know you now. I thought your face was familiar.” He extended a hand. “The great Callahan. Man, what’s happened to those Rams?”

“They’re rebuilding,” I explained. “How well do you know Skip?”

“Well enough to like him. Most of the gang down here do. He might not be so popular in Montevista, but he’s
our
kind of people.”

“Do you know where he is?”

He looked out at the boats in the yacht basin and back at me. He shook his head.

“His boat there?”

He paused, and nodded. “Chavez is probably aboard right now.”

I stared at him. “Chavez? He’s dead.”

“Pete
Chavez,” he explained. “Johnny’s cousin.” He looked thoughtfully at his image in the glistening coffee urn. “Maybe I got too much mouth, huh? I don’t even know you — only your rep.”

“Up here the police don’t even know that. At least they don’t respect it.” I sipped my coffee and kept my voice casual. “When did the boat come in?”

He studied me for seconds and then said doubtfully, “This morning, around eight. Don’t quote me.”

“I promise I won’t. Think Skip is aboard now?”

The thin man’s smile was cynical. “With the law looking for him? He’s not that simple.”

“Is he outside the law? What does he have to fear from the law?”

His voice was harsh. “In this town the law didn’t like Johnny Chavez or his friends or his relatives. Skip and Johnny were buddies. And you know who else is buddies-Sergeant Vogel and ex-Mayor James Blowhard Ritter, that puke! That’s some deal for Skip Lund, isn’t it? What chance has the man got?”

I said nothing.

“And,” he went on, “with Ritter lusting for Skip’s wife, you want Skip to turn himself in?”

I stared at him wonderingly. “Where did you learn all that?”

“A town this size,” he said contemptuously, “what else we got to talk about?”

“And you admire Skip Lund?”

He looked at me evenly. “Why not?”

I shrugged. “The picture I’ve been getting hasn’t been so — well, favorable.”

“Maybe you got one side of it, the Monte vista side. You might get a better picture if you asked about Skip around here.”

I thought of Mary Chavez’ telling me about Skip and Johnny and how they had lied to her and a hunch came to me.

I said to the counterman, “So Skip Lund and Johnny’s cousin were out of town when Johnny Chavez was killed?”

He frowned, staring. “I didn’t say that.”

His face was guarded; he was probably beginning to regret some of the things he had told me. I was no longer the great Callahan to him. Small-town insularity had built a wall between us.

“Is Skip’s boat visible from here?” I asked him.

He said nothing.

“I can find out,” I told him. I put a coin on the counter and slid off the stool.

He hesitated and then turned toward the harbor. “That fifty-footer with the brown hull and white cabin.” He pointed and turned to face me. “If Pete Chavez is aboard, don’t get lippy. He’s not tall, but he’s awful damned tough.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said. “Thank you.”

The flivver went rumbling back across the planks once more, toward the shore. Water beneath us and on both sides of us, the ancient pier weatherworn but solid.

I had a pattern in my mind now. By hint and by hunch a pattern had taken shape. If one believed in Skip Lund’s innocence, there had to be a reason why he hadn’t reported to the police. I was sure that Lund knew that he couldn’t be railroaded if his alibi was sound. Justice was dispensed by judges, not policemen.

So there had to be another reason why he was missing. Perhaps he had been on a trip, an ocean trip. Or perhaps his alibi would put him in water almost as hot as suspicion of murder. Either of these things could be true, and maybe both.

At the end of the pier a squad car pulled up alongside and I waited for a signal from the man next to the driver.

But he was looking straight ahead, ignoring me.

I let them slide by before making a left turn and starting to breathe again.

There was a parking lot here that served the yacht club and the dock area; I pulled in and found a space near the water. The pier that led to the slip holding the fifty-footer wasn’t far away.