Talk of The Town (11 page)

She took a sip of the drink. “About the motel?”

“That’s right. You said you wouldn’t sell at a sacrifice. Do you want to sell, if and when you can get a fair price?”

She nodded.

“Tell me something about it. What you paid, the size of the mortgage—if any—and what you think it’s worth now.”

“We paid ninety-five thousand, a little over a year ago. Thirty-five cash, and the balance at five per cent. We intended carrying on the landscaping ourselves, but my husband’s health became worse and we never could do it. And since his death it’s gone downhill even more badly. I can’t do it alone. Actually, I suppose the only sensible thing to do would be to sell and take the loss before I have to take a larger one, but I’m too stubborn to face it. The last time I had it evaluated, a real estate firm in Tallahassee that specializes in business property said they wouldn’t even be interested in a listing on it at over seventy-five thousand.”

“It could be built up,” I said. “I think you could get over a hundred thousand. It’s not the basic plant—it’s just that the grounds are so bleak. You need a swimming pool, children’s playground, lawns, shrubs, flower beds—”

“Of course. But I don’t have the money. I don’t know how I’m even going to refurnish that room—”

“That’s where I come in,” I said. “I’ve got a little money that was left me by my mother's family, and I told you I was looking for something to do, some kind of hard physical labor that’d sweat the gripes out of my system. I like gardening and landscape work; one of my uncles was a landscape architect down below San Francisco, and I used to work for him during summers when I was in high school and the two years I went to Stanford I know how to do all that, even to most of the swimming pool, and I’d like to try it. I think I could make a real showplace out of it.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “You’d like to buy a half-interest, and landscape it, as a speculation?”

“That’s it. I’d match the present value of your equity in cash to be put into landscaping. And by doing most of the work myself, which is what I want to do, we could make a pretty good profit when we sell. I hope.”

“But aren’t you forgetting something? You’ve just seen an example of the bitterness here. If someone hates me enough to do that to me, he isn’t going to stop merely because he’d be hurting somebody else too. Are you sure you want to let yourself in for it?”

“I was just coming to that. The thing to do is stop it. I gather you think that’s the work of some crackpot? Some joker with a warped mind who’s taking his viciousness out on you because he thinks you’re responsible for the death of your husband?”

“Yes,” she said, frowning. “Don’t you?”

“No. I think it’s the people who killed him.”

She barely avoided spilling her drink. She put it down. “But that was Strader—”

“And some woman. Well, she’s still here, and she’s got help. Maybe another boy friend, I don’t know. Listen— in all the time the police were questioning you, did they ever consider the possibility somebody might have tried deliberately to frame you?”

”Why, no,” she said wonderingly. “Not to my knowledge.”

“They could have kicked it around, of course, without telling you. At any rate, they should have.”

“Do you ready think so?”

“Yes. I don’t mean just her leaving the car out there; she had to get rid of it in some place that wouldn’t incriminate her, and it would be logical to put it back where Strader might have left it himself. I’m thinking of the telephone call.”

The one that woke me up?”

“Yes. You see—” I broke off then. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t intend to start digging into it now and ruin your evening. I want you to eat that steak.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry. I intend to eat it, and this isn’t going to ruin my evening. After what I’ve been through, a little sympathetic questioning is almost like having a big shoulder to cry on.”

“It was pretty rough?” I asked. “The questioning, I mean?”

“It was bad enough.”

“Who questioned you? The Sheriff?”

“Mostly. And sometimes Redfield. And often both of them at once.”

“What kind of man is the Sheriff?”

She thought about it. “A very competent one, I would say. He’s in his sixties, and I understand he’s held the job for over twenty years. But his health is failing; for the past month or more I believe he’s been at the Mayo Clinic. But I wasn’t mistreated, if that’s what you mean; it was just so terrifying. The Sheriff himself is a very courteous old gentleman, and while I began to feel after a while that Redfield disliked me intensely there was nothing mean or vicious in the way he treated me. Certainly there were no third-degree methods used.”

“Were you arrested?”

“Yes. But not right at first. In the beginning they were just trying to find out whether my husband knew Strader and if they’d planned to go fishing together and what time he’d left here, and so on and if I’d heard Strader's car leave or come back. Then about nine o’clock that morning they found out from the cook at the Silver King that he’d seen the car drive in and that it was a woman who got out of it. I was taken in to the Sheriff’s office then, and late in the afternoon I was charged with suspicion of murder and put in jail. I was questioned for hours at a time for three days before they finally dropped the charge for lack of evidence and released me.”

“And all the time they were hammering at you along one line? They wanted an admission, or proof of some kind, that you and Strader were—I mean—”

She smiled faintly. “Lovers,” she said calmly. “Yes. And after a while I began to be terrified. It just didn’t seem possible that they could believe a thing like that, but then I started seeing not only how they could but that it all looked so damaging they might even be able to convince a jury of it. In the first place, I’d told them originally I didn’t know Strader, and didn’t even know he was registered here. I’d just learned my husband had been killed and I was numb with shock, so naturally the name meant nothing to me. It didn’t even register in my mind. Then later, when I was able to think a little, I did remember I’d been in the office the evening before when he came in and asked for a room. So they wanted to know if I’d ever seen him before. I told them no, which was true to the best of my knowledge. Then they showed me two registration cards for the previous month—October—both with Strader's name and automobile number on them. It was merely a simple matter of my husband’s having been in the office on each of these times when he registered, but by now it had begun to snowball and everything looked suspicious. There was the fact I’d gone to Miami, alone, near the middle of October, between the first and second time Strader had come up here—”

“You went to Miami?” I hadn’t heard that part before.

“Yes.” She took another cigarette, and I lit it for her. “I went to see a doctor. They wanted to know why, of course, when we had a family doctor here—Dr. Graham. My nerves were just about at the snapping point by this time and I was on the ragged edge of hysteria, so my reaction was enough to arouse suspicion in itself. I became furious and refused to tell them why. Naturally, as soon as I realized the stupidity of this, I did explain, and they verified it with the doctor by long distance, but it was still damaging because it was something that could have been deliberately arranged as an excuse for going to Miami to meet Strader if I
were
carrying on an affair with him. I mean, I had appointments with the doctor for an hour each morning for two successive days, and while I did see an old friend or two while I was there, I was still alone in Miami for a large part of two afternoons and two nights. And then it wasn’t a case of my being ill—”

She hesitated.

“It’s all right,” I said. “You don’t have to go into it.”

She made a little gesture, and smiled. “Oh, why should it be embarrassing? My husband and I were very anxious to have a baby and were beginning to be concerned. It happens all the time. But I
was
furious when they were questioning me.”

“Well, look,” I said. “One of the big items against you was the fact that when they knocked on the door a little before five-thirty that morning it was obvious you were already awake. You explained it was a telephone call. Do you know whether they ever made any effort to check that?”

She shook her head. “No-o. Not that I know of. Why?”

“Because that’s the exact point it should have begun to occur to them there was a chance they had the wrong party. I understand the woman wanted to talk to somebody that wasn’t even registered and that she sounded about half-drunk, or at least with enough of a heat on to want to argue about it?”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Do you remember the name of the man she wanted to talk to?”

“Yes. It was a Mr. Carlson.”

“Well, do you know whether they ever made any attempt to find out if there
was
a Mr. Carlson registered at that time in any other motel or hotel in the county?”

“They never did say so if they did.”

“Of course, they might have, without bothering to tell you. They should have, at least, because five-fifteen in the morning’s a rather odd time to have a buzz on in a country town where the bars have been closed for hours. And either a little early or a little late to start trying to locate somebody in a motel. Did they ever challenge you on it?”

”Yes. They accused me several times of lying about it.”

“Sure. It could mean, then, that they’d found out there wasn’t any Mr. Carlson registered anywhere. So there was a pretty good chance nobody was trying to reach him. And if you were lying, you were obviously guilty. But if they accepted that, they were also morally obliged to accept the other side of the coin along with it. And that is that, if you weren’t lying, you were not only innocent, but were actually talking to the woman who
did
kill your husband.”

She stared at me. “What kind of woman could do a thing like that?”

“A tough one and a smart one,” I said. “Take a good look at her. In the space of a little over an hour she’d helped to kill a man, she’d seen her lover shot down by a policeman, and still she was able to get herself off the hook and figure out a way to set you up for it so she could stay off. Not exactly a choke-up artist, and about as flighty and hysterical as a cobra.”

I cooked the steaks after a while and we had dinner, not talking about it any more until afterwards when we were having coffee. She was quiet, but she ate a little of the steak and drank some wine. I lit a cigarette for her.

“Are you positive your husband never knew Strader?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said definitely. “I never heard him mention the name.”

“Then you realize he had to know the woman?”

“Why?” she asked.

“One of them had to have some provable connection with him; otherwise there was no point in trying to make it look like an accident. Strader wouldn’t have been suspected merely because he happened to be staying here at the motel. So the woman knew she would be. or could be. Look—there’s what’s driving the police crazy. The whole thing goes around in a perfect circle and always comes right back where it starts. The woman knew she would be suspected if there were a homicide investigation; there
was
a homicide investigation, and you were the only one who was ever suspected. Q.E.D. Except that they haven’t got any actual proof you even knew Strader, let alone were carrying on an affair with him. And if they tried to go to court without that proof, any defense attorney who’d been out of law school an hour would cut ‘em to shreds. Redfield probably wakes up shrieking and chewing the bedclothes. However, that’s his problem; mine is something else.”

“And what is that?”

“Simply this—
what in hell became of the other woman?
The one who knew she would be suspected, and never was?”

“Maybe she was mistaken, or exaggerating the possible danger.”

“No. On the evidence she’s a long-headed, cold-blooded type that doesn’t get rattled or jump to silly conclusions. So why was she wrong?”

“You say you think there’s another man involved. Maybe he was the one.”

I don’t think so. Strader came up here to see a woman; that’s what you run into everywhere you turn. The woman was at the bottom of the whole thing, and in it up to her neck. But say for the sake of argument it was this other man—why wasn’t
he
suspected? From what you say of that Sheriff, he wouldn’t deliberately suppress evidence for anybody. And I don’t think Redfield would.”

“No. I’m sure neither of them would. Redfield is a very hard man, but fair. And I think he’s thoroughly honest.”

I frowned. “That’s the picture I get of him too. But something’s chewing him. I get the impression he hates you and doesn’t care what they do to you out here, and at the same time he hates himself for it because basically he’s too honest a cop for that kind of thing.”

She nodded. “I think I understand what you mean. You remember I told you that during the questioning I began to feel he disliked me intensely. There are two reasons for it. My husband knew him quite well, and I remember his remarking once that Redfield was what was known as a dedicated police officer. There was nothing he hated worse than seeing a criminal get away with something. And the other reason is simply that my husband was a sort of boyhood hero to Redfield, as he was to a lot of others around here who were younger than he was. I mean, when they were in grammar school he was the greatest end the local high school ever turned out, and then when they were in high school he was being mentioned for Ail-American at Georgia Tech with his picture and big write-ups in the Florida papers. Boyish, perhaps, but it lasts. Especially when he went on to become a war hero and then made a name for himself in business in Miami. He was always popular. And especially here in his home town, particularly when he returned to it when his health failed and he had to retire. So to Redfield and to a lot of others the whole issue is crystal clear. I’m a tramp, and I committed murder and got away with it.”

She said it calmly enough, with no evidence of cracking. You’d have to look closely to see the weariness and pain far back under control. I had a strong desire to comfort her in some way, but at the same time sense enough to realize there was nothing I could do. Except get on with it.

“What time did Strader check in?” I asked.

“Around six p.m., I think,” she replied.

“And he was alone?”

She nodded.

“And those two times in October, did the cards show he registered alone then?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t recall there was ever any evidence afterwards that there had been a woman in the room with him?”

“No,” she said. “Even if there were, though, the maid would just assume the room had been rented to a couple and not say anything about it. But of course it was searched very thoroughly the last time, by the police. There was no trace of a woman at all.”

“So the woman lived here in town, and he apparently wasn’t bringing her to his room, even late at night. Or at least, not the last time. Did they check the records at all the other motels to be sure he hadn’t been here at other times and stayed at a different place?”

“Yes. Apparently he came up only those three times, and always stayed here for some reason. That was damaging, too, of course.”

“Did you recall seeing him at any time later that same night? I mean, when you went outside, did you notice whether his car was still in front of the room?”

She shook her head helplessly. “No. They kept asking me that, but I just don’t remember. There were eight rooms rented that night, so the chances were against my noticing whether any one car was there or gone.”

“And your husband was going fishing alone?”

“Yes.”

“What time did he leave? Did you get up too?”

“No,” she said. I always offered to, to make his coffee for the flask, but he insisted on doing it himself. He rarely took a lunch, because he was usually back by noon. That morning he got up at three-thirty—I remember him setting the alarm. It woke me, too, of course, and I could hear him moving around in the kitchen, drinking coffee and filling the flask. All the fishing equipment and his motor were already in the station wagon, of course, since he always loaded it the night before. He came into the bedroom before he left, as he always did, and kissed me when he saw I was awake. He made our standard joke about catching bass so big he wouldn’t have to lie about it, and then I heard him drive off. I—I-” She took a sudden, shaky breath, and leaned forward to crush out the cigarette.

“You didn’t hear any other car leave?” I asked quickly, to get her past it.

“No.” She was all right now. “After a while I went back to sleep. And the next thing was when the phone woke me and this woman wanted to talk to Mr. Carlson. By the time I’d finally convinced her there was no such person registered, I was too wide awake to go back to bed. I washed my face and heated the coffee—he always left some for me. It was less than ten minutes later when the Sheriff knocked on the door.”

“Do you know exactly what time he left here?” I asked.

“It would be between ten minutes to and four o’clock,” she replied. “It was nearly always the same. It took twenty to twenty-five minutes from the time the alarm went off.”

”And how long does it take to drive to this Cut where he kept the boat?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Did they fix the exact time Calhoun jumped Strader down there?”

She nodded. “Calhoun testified at the inquest that it was a squeaky brake on the car that woke him up. He looked at his watch, and it was four-twenty-five.”

“Umh-umh. There’s just one more thing. Have you ever had reason to suspect your husband was involved with any other woman at all?”

“No,” she said. “Certainly not.”

“Well, sometimes at that age—”

There was a quick ruffling of temper in the eyes. “I told you—” Then she stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry,” she said, and smiled. She pushed a hand back through her hair with that weary gesture she had. “I didn’t intend to snap at you that way.”

She was tiring. It occurred to me I was doing a very poor job of carrying out the doctor’s orders. I crushed out the cigarette and stood up. “Back to bed for you. I’ll get your medicine.” I brought over one of the sleeping pills from my room.

She smiled. “You and Dr. Graham are a heavy-handed pair of conspirators. Didn’t it ever occur to either of you if I’d wanted to take that way out of it I’d have done it long ago?”

“To be frank,” I said, “neither of us was too sure how you’d come out of that business this morning. You’re a stronger girl than we gave you credit for.”

She stood up and held out her hand. “Well, run along before I make a liar out of you. You’ll never know how nice you’ve been.”

“Good night,” I said. “We’ll talk over that deal in the morning.” I locked the back door and left. I sat on the side of the concrete slab in front of my room smoking and watching the place until Josie returned. There was no telling what they would do next. Georgia Langston was sleeping peacefully when Josie came back around ten-thirty and set up her cot in the living-room. I told her to keep the front door bolted, and went across to bed.

I checked to be sure the window at the rear of the room was locked and the curtains tightly drawn. There was something very chilling in the thought of that shotgun. I could still see the empty eyes at the ends of its dual barrels searching for me down there in the gloom like some nightmarish radar. Only a fool wouldn’t be scared. He was smart, and he was deadly, and I didn’t have the faintest idea who he was. And if I didn’t flush him out before he had a second chance, I wasn’t going to be very pretty when they found me.

I lay in bed in the darkness, listening to the quiet hum of the air-conditioner and trying to make some glimmer of sense of it. Langston had left here alive at ten minutes to four at the earliest, and he’d arrived there at four-twenty-five with his head bashed in, rolled up in a tarpaulin in the back of his own station wagon. It was a twenty-minute drive. So in fifteen minutes at the outside he’d gone somewhere and managed to get himself killed. He couldn’t have gone very far. But that didn’t mean anything. It was a small town, and at that time of morning, with no traffic, you could get from one end of it to the other in less than five minutes.

But how did a woman get into the picture? Even if he were a chaser, which everybody said he wasn’t, nobody went prowling at four in the morning in a country town. Not with bass tackle and an outboard motor and a flask of coffee. It was ridiculous.

The woman was in the picture, obviously, because she was Strader’s girl friend, the one he’d been coming up here to see. But what possible connection could there be between Strader’s girl friend and Langston? The easy answer to that, of course, brought you right back to the police point of view. Langston was married to her. So try again. The woman was here in town. She lived here. Somewhere before she must have known Strader. He’d driven up here three times in two months to see her, and it was a thousand miles’ round trip. Strader, on the evidence, was no love-starved adolescent, so she must be quite a girl. Of course, you never knew what some other man would go for, but how many had I seen around here so far that could pull me the length of the State of Florida?

One. I was back to the police point of view again.

I sighed in the darkness and lit a cigarette. She was here somewhere and I had to find her.

I had one very slim lead. When she’d called me on the phone, she had made no attempt to disguise her voice, even if it were possible, or cover it with the slurred speech of the half-drunken as she had when she’d called Mrs. Langston that morning. It simply wasn’t necessary, because in half an hour I was going to be dead anyway. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

But how did you explain that insane thing about the fan?

Then I set straight up in bed, cursing myself for an idiot. Why hadn’t I seen it before? There was no mystery about the fan at all. That first call, when she’d hung up abruptly, wasn’t a teaser or come-on, as I’d thought it was, or a way of lending authenticity to her story. Or not solely any of those. It was also a test. They were checking me.

Somewhere he’d seen me going in and out of those phone booths, and suspected what I was up to, but he wanted to be absolutely sure. So what could be simpler than setting up a phony for me, duplicating the noise with a fan near some other telephone, and watching while she called me? If I ran across the street to try to catch her when she hung up, he’d know. And I had. And he knew. So she made the second one, and sent me out to meet the shotgun. Very smooth teamwork; you had to admit it, even if it scared you.

So far, so good. Did it mean, then, that it had to be one of the four who’d been at the place that first time— Rupe, Dunleavy, Ollie, or Pearl Talley? Not necessarily, I thought; they seemed to have ways of knowing everything I did in this town, and even if he’d spotted me somewhere farther up the line and followed me for a while to make sure what I was doing, he could have found out from any number of people that I’d finally come out and checked the booth at the Silver King. But it definitely made more sense if it were one of those four. He’d know I had more reason to suspect him, because he was still there.

Assume it was one of the four. Which one? Dunleavy worked in a filling station just up the road. He would have been able to see me when I ran over there. Ollie was already there, naturally. Pearl Talley had come in just after me. That left only Rupe unaccounted for. Did that make him more or less likely than the others? He could have been watching from anywhere around, and remained out of sight.

Wouldn’t that be the natural thing to do, rather than walking in openly, as Talley had done? Sure, I thought, except for one thing. As far as my reasoning it out afterwards was concerned, the way they saw it, there was no sweat at all. Afterwards I was going to be dead.

So it could have been Talley just as well as any of the others. No, I thought. Not with that mush-mouthed, Georgia-boy accent of his. Whoever the man was, I’d heard him twice on the telephone, and while he’d been whispering once and speaking very softly the other time, some of that houn’-dawg dialect would have come through if it’d been Talley. That left three of them.

So now I had two very tenuous threads to follow, both due to the fact they’d underestimated my life expectancy. They’d know I had them, and they wouldn’t make the same mistake again. It was a long time before I got to sleep.