Melting Clock (10 page)

“I noticed the boomtown excitement,” I said.

“See, there you are. Sarcasm. Big city sarcasm.” He plopped his straw hat on the desk and looked at the phone. “That’s what people move down here to get away from.”

“Nelson,” I said. “Pick up the phone and call the Highway Patrol. This is out of your league.”

“You are a truly vexing person,” he said. “I will indeed call the Highway Patrol in a few moments—to inform them that I have apprehended the murderer of a member of one of Mirador’s oldest families.”

“Oldest,” I repeated. “Not most prominent, most beloved?”

“Oldest will suffice,” said Nelson, looking away from me through the front window of the office. Two kids, one boy, one girl, both about ten, were walking down the middle of the street unthreatened by Mirador’s growth of population and industry. “And respected.”

“Respected?”

“Any family which is capable of contributing one hundred and six votes in a town of a little more than two thousand permanent residents is a respected family,” Nelson explained, letting his fingers touch the phone.

“One hundred and five,” I corrected.

“One hundred and six is what I said and what I meant,” Nelson said with irritation. “Mr. Claude Street was a newcomer to this community and had not yet registered to vote.”

“Newcomer?”

“One who has recently come,” Nelson said with a shake of his head, as if talking to a semi-retarded nephew, “from Carmel.” He said “Carmel” as if it were a particularly sticky and unpleasant word.

“It was not easy to rent that store,” he said.

“You own the store?”

“If it is of any concern to you, I own all of downtown,” Nelson said, without enthusiasm. “And as you can see, it has made my fortune.”

“Nelson, I didn’t kill Claude Street,” I said. “You know that.”

His back was to me now and he was staring at the phone.

“I know no such thing,” he said in total exasperation. “The evidence would suggest quite the contrary. I found you with a gun in your hand.”

“It won’t match the bullet in Street’s neck.”

Nelson’s sigh was enormous.

“You could have shot him with another weapon that you disposed of or have hidden,” he said.

“You’ve wasted a good five minutes.”

“Do you know what I truly wanted to do with my existence?” he asked, picking up the phone and lifting the receiver off the hook. He turned to me quickly, and I shook my head to indicate that he had not previously shared this confidence with me—nor had I figured it from the many clues he had dropped.

Into the phone he said, “Miss Rita Davis Abernathy, will you please connect me with the office of the Highway Patrol … No, Miss Rita, you may not inquire … It is police business … I am confident that if you display even a modicum of patience and listen in on the line after you connect me—which I am as sure you will do as I am sure my mother’s favorite child is sitting in this chair … Thank you, Miss Rita.”

While he waited for Miss Rita to put him through, Nelson turned to me and remarked, “I wanted to be a man of the cloth, as my father was before me, and his father before him.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“I did not have the calling,” he said.

“Amen,” I said as into the phone he said, with great animation, “Lieutenant Freese? It is I, Sheriff Mark Nelson of the Municipality of Mirador. A homicide has taken place.”

He looked at me again and continued, “It is likely that I have apprehended the person who committed the crime, but it is also possible that he had assistance or that … I will be happy to get to the point if you will; my father always said that a man should be allowed to finish what he … About ten minutes ago … I have no deputy on duty. As you may recall, I have only one deputy, Deputy Mendoza, who is using his day off to—Thank you.”

He hung up the phone and turned to me again.

“What has happened to civility in this world?”

He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“A lost art,” I sympathized.

“There is but one church in this town and the minister, alas, is without style or substance.” Nelson stood up.

I knew—and Nelson knew—that he should go a few doors down and at least give the impression he knew what he was doing, but he didn’t have the heart for it. In the long run, he was doing the right thing, staying out of the way till the Highway Patrol showed up.

“How few of us are fortunate enough to achieve our life ambitions,” he said.

“It’s better to have ambitions and not achieve them than to have none at all,” I responded.

Nelson looked at me seriously for the first time since our eyes had met through the window of Claude Street’s Old California Shop.

“First Corinthians?” he asked.

“
Charlie Chan in Rio,
” I answered.

Neither of us spoke again until the Highway Patrol car pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office about twenty minutes later. I lay on the cot looking at the ceiling and Nelson sat looking out the window at the car from which two Highway Patrol officers in full uniform and as big as redwoods stepped out and looked around. There wasn’t much to see.

Nelson was up, hat in hand, as phony a smile as I’ve seen anywhere but on the face of a receptionist at Columbia Pictures.

“It is not my day,” Nelson said between his closed smiling teeth. “The Rangley brothers.”

The two state troopers came in and moved past Nelson in my direction. One had a face like Alley Oop with a shave and the other one looked like his brother.

“Trooper Rangley,” Nelson began. “This—”

“Where’s the dead man?” interrupted the bigger Rangley.

“Two doors down,” said Nelson. “In the Old California Antique Shop. His name is …”

But the Rangley’s, after looking at me as if to say I was one sorry specimen, turned and went back out on the street. They moved out of sight to the right of the window. Nelson turned to me. “I cannot but believe, though it runs counter to reason,” he said, “that you have killed Mr. Claude Street for the sole purpose of bringing tribulation into my life.”

“I didn’t kill him, Nelson,” I said.

Nelson’s smile was gone.

“My lady is waiting for me,” he said. “My fondest wish at this moment is to absent myself and allow the Rangley brothers—who, to the best of my knowledge, have no first names nor any need of them—to persuade you to confess to every crime committed within the state of California from moments after your birth to the instant I confined you to that cell.”

“Here they come,” I said.

Nelson put his smile back on and pivoted in his swivel chair to face the Rangleys as they came back into the sheriff’s office.

“Man’s dead in there,” said the bigger Rangley.

“That was my conclusion upon witnessing the corpse,” said Nelson.

There were two possible ways to interpret Sheriff Nelson’s statement: He was either humoring these walking specimens of recently quarried stone, or he was making a joke he was confident would elude them. I would have voted for the former, but Rangley Number Two was taking no chances.

He was about a foot taller than Nelson. He stopped in front of him and smiled. Though I didn’t think it possible, Nelson’s smile got even broader.

Big Rangley was moving toward me in the cell. I kept sitting on the cot. His face was red and Alley Oop wasn’t smiling at me.

“Sardines. ‘Look where he ate the sardine’? I don’t like crazy shit,” he muttered softly.

Since I agreed with him, there wasn’t much for me to say. I nodded. “The other officer over there behind me,” he went on, “he’s my brother. He likes crazy shit even less than I do.”

The other brother was losing the grinning battle with Nelson, though I knew the sheriff was doomed to lose the war.

The big Rangley said, “Keys.”

Sheriff Nelson pulled his keys out and handed them to the patrolman, who threw them to his brother, who, without removing his brown eyes from me, held up his hand to catch them. The keys flew past him and landed inside the cell at my feet.

“All the good receivers were drafted,” I said, reaching down for the key ring.

It was the wrong thing to say.

“Just pick up the keys and open the cell,” he said. “Officer Rangley and the sheriff are going a few doors down to wait for the evidence truck and the county coroner while you and I palaver.”

I swear he said “palaver,” but the way he said it convinced even me that I’d be better off playing second banana in this Kermit Maynard western.

“The prisoner is—” Nelson began.

“—about to be interrogated,” said the big Rangley as his brother ushered Nelson to and through the front door.

I got up and opened the door. Rangley came around the corner and entered. He put out his hand and I gave him the key.

“Been locked up before?” he asked.

“A few times. Once before in this cell.”

“Tell me about sardines,” he said.

“Not much to tell,” I answered. “When I was a kid I liked to make sardine salad—mash up a can with onions and mayo. Still like it once in a while. Or a sandwich on white with butter and a thick slice of onion.”

Rangley nodded, muttered something like “hmmpff” and closed the cell door. The keys went into his pocket.

“This came at a bad time …”

“Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters. I’m a private investigator. I was—”

“… about to sit,” said Rangley.

I sat on the cot.

“You know there’re springs in that cot?” he said, standing over me.

“Yes,” I said.

He looked around the cell and shook his head.

“Even a half-assed short-timer could pull a spring at night and cut the eyes off Nelson or his homo Mex deputy,” he went on.

“That’s an idea,” I said.

He laughed and the heel of his right hand came forward and slammed against what was left of my nose. That wasn’t too bad, but I flew back on the cot and hit my head on the wall. That was bad. I rebounded and thought I heard a musical saw.

“How’s the head?” he asked gently, handing me his pocket handkerchief.

“Fine,” I said, accepting the handkerchief and putting it to my nose.

“Don’t worry about the blood,” he said with a smile, sitting next to me. “Can I give you a little advice?”

“You have my undivided attention.”

He put his hand on my knee and whispered, “Don’t answer me smart again.”

“That’s good advice,” I said, checking the handkerchief. It was wet and dark red.

“Keep it,” he said gently.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You kill the guy?”

“The one with the yellow wig?”

“Is there more than one?”

“I just saw the one,” I said.

“How’s your head?” he asked again, touching my arm. I got the point.

“I didn’t kill him. I was trying to find him. Someone stole three Salvador Dali paintings and three clocks from my client.”

“Three clocks, three paintings,” he repeated with a knowing nod of the head. “Big clock in there one of the clocks?”

“Yeah.”

“And that painting? That grasshopper on the egg crap in there. That one of the paintings?”

“Right,” I said.

“This Dali’s a crazy asshole,” he said.

“That could be,” I said, putting the handkerchief back to my nose.

Big Rangley chuckled. I didn’t know what was funny but, as Wild Bill Elliot says, I’m a sociable man. I made a sound that might well be taken for a chuckle.

“Remember what I said when I came in this place, Peters?”

“You don’t like crazy shit.”

“Don’t like it at all,” he agreed, clapping me on the back. He reached into his vest pocket and came out with a little notebook, which he flipped open to the first page and read:

“Time is running out. One clock. One painting. Last chance. ‘Look where he ate the sardine.’”

He closed the notebook, returned it to his vest pocket and buttoned it.

“Now,” he said. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Beyond the window a Mirador crowd was gathering. A crowd in Mirador was somewhere between two and six people. This crowd included two girls around ten, the kid from the gas station where I had used the phone book, and a vacant-looking fat man in overalls whose palms and nose were pressed to the window the way they had been pressed against the antique shop window when I had driven down Main Street about an hour ago. Another car pulled up at the curb. The crowd turned and a man about seventy got out of a black Ford coupe. He came to the door of the sheriffs office, opened it and saw Rangley.

“Two doors over, Doc,” said Rangley, pointing past me. “Melvin’s in there.”

Doc was wearing a wrinkled long-sleeved blue shirt and suspenders, no tie. He was carrying one of those black doctor bags. Doc looked at me.

“Don’t hit him again, Beau,” the doctor said and left the office, closing the door behind him.

“Doc’s a humanitarian,” Rangley confided. “But Doc doesn’t have to talk to many living people during business hours. Easy to be a humanitarian when you don’t have to meet humanity.”

“Trooper,” I said. “You’re a philosopher.”

“And you’re one hell of a fool if you think what the doc said and those village half-wits out there watching are going to stop me from ripping what’s left of your nose off if you smart off.”

The punch was low, short, and hard. It caught me about where my kidney must be.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said, trying to keep the pain from my voice.

I knew the next question and my next answer. I considered throwing an elbow into Trooper Beau Rangley’s throat. It might work, but what then? A run for L.A. in my Crosley? I tightened my muscles, those that would still pay attention, and waited.

“Who you working for, Peters?”

I looked at the retarded man with his face against the window. He grinned at me. It was a nice friendly grin. He pulled his left hand from the window. It left a bloody handprint.

“I can’t tell you that without the client’s permission,” I said, forcing myself to look at Rangley and not at the window.

The outer door to the sheriff’s office came open before Rangley could throw the punch, and his brother came in with Sheriff Nelson.

“Doc wants to see you, Beau,” Mel Rangley said.