Talk of The Town (6 page)

But why? There was suspicion here, God knows, like a dark and ugly stain all over town, and distrust and antagonism, but they couldn’t explain a thing like this. A deliberate attempt to drive somebody crazy was worse than murder. It had to be the work of a hopelessly warped mind. But could a deranged mind call the shots the way he had last night? I didn’t know. The thing grew murkier every time you turned around.

Out behind the building I found some planks that would do to stand on, and dragged them up in front of No. 5. Just as I was throwing them down on the gravel a police car turned in from the highway. There was only one officer in it. He stopped and got out, a big man still in his twenties, with the build and movements of an athlete. He had a fleshy, good-looking face with a lot of assurance in it, a cleft chin, green eyes, and long dark hair meticulously combed. He could have attacked you with the creases in the khaki trousers and the short jacket, but he wouldn’t have needed to. The gunbelt about his waist carried a .45 with pearl handles, and dangling from the trouser belt was an embossed leather case containing his handcuffs. With only a few changes of uniform he could have just stepped off the set of
Rose Marie,
and I half expected him to burst into song. Cut it out, I thought. You’ve had a grouch on so long you hate everybody.

“Redfield?” I asked.

He gave me a negligent shake of the head. “Magruder.”

“I’m glad to see you,” I said. “My name’s Chatham.”

He contained his ecstasy over that with no great difficulty. “I hear you’re real antsy for somebody to look at that room,” he said. “So let’s look at it.”

I nodded towards the open doorway of No. 5. He strode over with the insolent grace of a bullfighter, his thumbs hooked in the gunbelt, and peered in.

“Hmmm,” he said. Then he turned and jerked his head at me. “All right. Get those planks in there.”

I glanced at him, but kept my mouth shut, and tossed the planks in. I felt like Sir Waller Raleigh. While I was standing on the second and dropping the third, which would reach opposite the bathroom door, he stepped inside.

Glancing around at the obscene and senseless ruin, he said casually, “Quite a mess, huh?”

“That was more or less the way it struck me,” I said. He paid no attention. I stepped over to look into the bathroom, and felt the proddings of rage again. He’d got the fixtures, all right. Both the tub and wash-basin had dark slashes across the bottom where he’d gouged the enamel off. I wondered how he’d managed to keep the noise down. Probably used a rubber mallet with the chisel, I thought. He’d also used the same tool to gouge long streaks across the tile on the walls. On the floor were two empty one-gallon glass jugs with the rubber stoppers lying beside them.

Magruder came up alongside me and peered in. He grinned. “That guy was in a real pet, wasn’t he?”

You asked for a cop and they sent you a comic-opera clown like this. I choked down a sarcastic remark that wouldn’t have helped the situation a great deal, and was just about to ask him where he wanted to start when he shrugged and said, “Well, that’s about it, huh?” He turned and went out.

I stared at his back in disbelief, but followed him. I caught up with him on the porch. “What do you mean, that’s it?”

He favored me with an indifferent glance and hitched up his gunbelt again. “I’ve seen it, haven’t I? I’ll make a report on it, but we haven’t got much to go on.”

“How about checking this place for prints?” I asked. “Or don’t you want to? And how about the registration card he made out? And if you thought it wouldn’t bore you too much, I can give you a description of him. And the car. Any of that interest you? And what about those jugs in there?”

“Well, what about the jugs? They had acid in ‘em. So I know that already.”

I was beginning to get it now, though not the reason for it. Even this scenic and posturing hero wasn’t that stupid. He knew what you did with those jugs. You checked them for prints; you found out what kind of acid had been in them; then you found out where they’d been stolen from, and how, and went on from there. It was a deliberate goof-off.

“Then you’re not interested? Is that it?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“How do you get hold of the Sheriff of this County?” I asked. “Is there a password or something? I’ve tried the office twice—”

“Try the Mayo Clinic,” he suggested. Then he added, “It’s in Minnesota.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But maybe somebody’s in charge while he’s gone?”

“Sure,” he said. “Redfield.”

“I see.”

“You remember him; you talked to him on the phone.” He grinned. “He mentioned it.”

“Sure,” I said. I remember him. That’s what puzzles me. He sounded like a cop.”

He turned and stared coldly. “What do you mean by that?”

“Did he tell you how to do this? Or did you figure it out yourself?”

“He did tell me to find out who the hell you are,” he snapped. “Turn around and put your hands against that wall.”

“Cut it out,” I said.

“Turn around!”

I sighed and put my hands against the wall. He shook me down for the gun he knew I didn’t have. Then he caught me by the shoulder and whirled me around facing him. and did it again. He managed to get an elbow under my chin a couple of times, pull my shirt tail out, and step on my feet, but as a rough frisk it was pretty crude Any rookie could have done better. Humiliation is the only object of it, anyway, and without an audience it’s pointless. He stepped back.

“You through?” I asked.

“You got any identification?”

“It’s in my hip pocket. You’ve been over it three times.” “Give it here.”

I took out the wallet, deliberately removed the money from it, and handed it to him. His face reddened. He shuffled through the identification.

His eyes jerked up at me. “Cop, huh?”

“I was one,” I said.

“What are you doing around here?”

“I’m going to wash the acid out of that room as soon as we finish this comedy routine.”

“I mean, what’re you hanging around for? What have you got to do with this place? And Mrs. Langston?”

“I’m staying here, while they fix my car.”

“How come you’re working for her? Can’t you pay for your room?”

“Let’s just say she’s a friend of mine. And I thought she needed help.”

“A friend, huh? How long have you known her?”

“A little less than a day.”

He gave me a cold smile. “You sure make friends fast. Or maybe she does.”

“Tell me something,” I said. “How does it happen she can’t get any police protection?”

“Who said she couldn’t?”

“Look around you.”

“What do you expect us to do?” he asked. “Stay out here night and day because people don’t like her?”

“Who
doesn’t?” I asked. “If you’re supposed to be a cop, I’d think that would suggest something to you. It’s just possible the guy who dumped that acid in there didn’t like her.”

“Round up half the people in town? Is that it?”

“You know better than that. There’s not half a dozen people in any town that’d do a job like this.”

I was wasting my breath. He turned away and stepped down onto the gravel. “Here’s your stuff,” he said, and tossed the wallet onto the concrete at my feet.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t mention it. And there’s one more thing. If it was me, I’d be mighty careful who I got mixed up with around here. She’s going to have all the police attention she wants one of these days.”

“Yes?” I said. I’d been wondering if he’d come out and say it. “Why?”

“If you’ve been around here all day, you know why. She killed her husband.”

“Then you don’t arrest people for that around here, and try them?” I asked. “You just let hoodlums burn their places down with acid?”

“You arrest ‘em as soon as you’ve got a case,” he said. “You’re able to tell everybody how to run a police department, you ought to know that.”

“Did you ever hear of slander?” I asked.

He nodded. “Sure. And did you ever try to prove it without witnesses?”

He went over and started to get into his car. “Wait a minute,” I said. He paused and turned.

I reached down and picked up the wallet. “You wanted to see me do it, didn’t you? I wouldn’t want to spoil your whole day.”

He stared coldly, but said nothing as he drove off.

I located the fuse box and killed the circuits in that wing of the building so I wouldn’t electrocute myself with the hose. Changing into swimming trunks, I went to work. I stood in the doorway playing the hose on walls and ceiling and furniture until water began running over the threshold. I broke open a half-dozen boxes of the soda and scattered it around and washed down some more. When I tried to move the bedclothes, curtains, and mattresses, they tore into rotten and mushy shreds, so I found some garden tools and raked them out onto the gravel, along with all the carpet I could tear up. It was sickening.

Even as diluted as the stuff was now, it kept stinging my feet when I had to step off the boards. I played the hose on them to wash it off. In about fifteen minutes I had the worst of it out. I dragged the bed-frames and headboards, the chest, the two armchairs, and the night table out onto the concrete porch and played the hose on them some more and scattered the rest of the soda over the wet surfaces. I showered and changed back into my clothes, and went over to the office. Josie said Mrs. Langston was sleeping quietly. She brought me the keys to the station wagon.

“Turn on the “No Vacancy” sign,” I said. “And if anybody comes in, tell him the place is closed.”

She looked doubtful. “You reckon Miss Georgia goin’ to like that? She’s kind of pinched for money.”

“I’ll square it with her,” I said. “She needs rest more than she needs money, and we’re going to see she gets it.”

That wasn’t the only reason, but I saw no point in going into it now. I drove into town and parked near the garage. In the repair shed a mechanic was working on my car, unbolting the old radiator. He looked up and nodded.

“Borrow one of your screwdrivers?” I asked. “Sure,” he said. “Here.”

I went around back and tested one of the screws holding the rear plate. It came loose freely. So did the other one. You could even see where he’d put machine oil on the threads to break them loose. I heard footsteps beside me and looked up. It was the sour-faced foreman in his white overall.

He nodded. “What’s all the whoop-de-do with the license plates? Man from the Sheriff’s office was fiddlin’ with ‘em a while ago. And dusting powder over them.”

“Which man?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t know him. That hard case.”

“Magruder?”

He shook his head. “That’s the one thinks he’s hard. This one is. Kelly Redfield.”

I thought he’d sounded like a good cop. He screamed about it and for some reason tried to slough it off, but in the end he had to come and see. “What he say?” I asked.

“Say? That guy? He wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

“But he did tell you where they broke in?”

Surprise showed for an instant on the sour and frozen face before he brought it under control again. “How’d you know? He said there was a busted pane in the washroom window. And he wanted to know if we’d missed anything.”

“Have you?”

He shook his head. “Not as far as we can tell yet.”

“How about battery acid?”

“We haven’t got any.”

Well, he’d stolen it somewhere in this area, because he had it here at two a.m. He couldn’t have gone very far after it. Maybe Redfield had some ideas. I should be able to catch him at the office.

It was at the rear of the courthouse, a dreary room floored with scarred brown linoleum and smelling of dust. The wall at the right was banked with steel filing cabinets, and across the room at desks near a barred window, Magruder and a bull of a man with red hair were doing paperwork. The wall at my left was filled with bulletins and “Wanted” posters. A large overhead fan circled with weary futility, stirring the heat. At the left end of the room there was a water-cooler and a doorway leading into an inner office.

Magruder came over. I noticed he still wore the heavy gunbelt and the .45 even while shuffling papers. Maybe he wore it to bed. “What do you want now?” he asked.

“I want to talk to your boss.”

At that moment a lean-hipped man in faded khaki came out of the inner office with a handful of papers which he tossed on one of the desks. Magruder jerked his head at me. “Kelly, here’s that guy now.”

Redfield turned with a quick, hard glance. “Chatham?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Come in here.”

I followed him into the inner office. An old roll-top desk against the wall on the left. On the right there were two filing cabinets, and a hat-rack on which were draped his jacket, a black tie, and a shoulder holster containing a gun. A locked, glass-fronted case held four carbines. One barred window looked out onto a parking area paved with white gravel.

He nodded towards the straight chair at the end of the desk. “Sit down.”

Without taking his eyes off me, he groped in the pocket of the jacket for cigarettes. He lit one, without offering them to me, and flipped the match into the tray on his desk. He was a man of thirty-six or thirty-eight, with an air of tough competence about him that matched the way he had sounded on the telephone. The face was lean, the jaw clean-cut and hard, and he had a high, rounded forehead and thinning brown hair. The hard-bitten eyes were gray. It was a face with intelligence in it, and character, but for the moment at least, no warmth at all.

“All right, Chatham,” he said. “What are you after around here?”

“Magruder told you,” I said. “You sent him to find out.”

“I did. And you don’t make any sense. Start making some.”

He irritated me, and puzzled me at the same time. Honest, hard-working professional cop was written all over him, and he hadn’t been able to resist a police problem, but why the antagonism? “Were there any prints on those plates?” I asked.

“No,” he said curtly. “Of course not. And there wouldn’t have been any in the room, or on those jugs. You think the man who worked out that operation was a fool, or an amateur? But never mind him; let’s get back to you.”

“Why?”

“I want to know who the hell you are, and what you’re doing here. He went to all that trouble to use your plates Why?”

The message was for me,” I said. I told him about the telephone call warning me to leave, and the earlier call to her and my efforts to find the booth with the noisy fan.

He walked over in front of me. “In other words, you’re, not in town thirty minutes before you’re up to your neck in police business. You’re a trouble-maker, Chatham; I can smell you a mile off.”

“I reported it to this office,” I said. “And I was kissed off. You’re trying to slough off this acid job, too, but you can’t quite make yourself do it entirely. What’s with it? I’ve seen dirt swept under the rug before, but you don’t look quite the type for it.”

Just for an instant there was something goaded and savage in his eyes, and I thought he was going to hit me. Then he had it under control. “Nobody is being kissed off here,” he said. “And nothing is being swept under the rug. The description of that man, and his car, have gone out to all adjoining counties and to the Highway Patrol. I know where the acid came from—”

“You do?” I asked.

“Shut up,” he said, without raising his voice. “You shot off your mouth, and I’m telling you, so listen. The chances are a thousand to one he’ll never be picked up. Green Ford sedans are as common as Smiths in a raided whore house. So are men answering that description. Even together, you haven’t got much, and by now he’ll be in a different car altogether. In a place this size, he had to be from out of town. That means he was probably hired for the job, and he could be from anywhere within a thousand miles of here. The acid itself is a dead end. A truck was hijacked a few weeks ago just east of here, and one of the items on the manifest was ten gallons of sulphuric acid. I just looked it up. The hijackers were never caught, and none of the stuff’s been located. The bulk of it was paint, that could be sold anywhere. So try to come up with a lead there. That just leaves you.”

“What do you mean?”

He jabbed a forefinger at me. “You stick out of this mess like a blonde with a pet skunk, and the more I look at you the wronger you get. For some reason, it happens the very day you show up. You’ve got some cock-and-bull story about a mysterious telephone call. If you’re lying about that, you’re mixed up in it. If you’re not lying and somebody is trying to get you out of here, you’re mixed up in something else. I don’t like trouble-makers and goons that wander in here for no reason at all and seem to wind up out there at that motel. We’ve still got the stink from the last one.”

“I thought we’d get back to that,” I said. “In other words you don’t care what happens to her, or how she gets pushed around. You’ve got an unsolved murder on your hands and as far as you’re concerned she’s guilty, whether you can prove it or not. Well, you’re right about the smell around here. And it’s about time somebody found what’s causing it.”

He leaned over me with one hand on the corner of the desk. “Get this, Chatham,” he said harshly, “and get it straight the first time. I don’t know what you’re after around here, but I know you. We don’t need any meddlers, and we’ve got all the trouble we need. You make one phony move, and I’m going to land on you, and land hard. Now get out of here, and do your best to stay out.” I stood up.

“Okay. I can hear you.”

Magruder had come over, and was standing in the doorway. He stared coldly. Redfield nodded for him to let me out, and he moved to one side. “Big shot,” he said.

I ignored him, and spoke to Redfield. “I’m not stupid enough to bring charges before a Grand Jury as long as you’re going through the motions, but don’t think you can stop me from looking under the rug myself. And when you land on me, make sure you’ve got legal grounds.”

“I will have,” he said. “Now, beat it.”

I went out, conscious that I had just made the situation worse, but still angry enough not to care. I stopped at a drugstore to have the prescriptions made up, and drove back to the motel. When I parked in front of the office, I looked at my watch. It was after eleven, and I remembered I’d never had any breakfast. Maybe I could catch Ollie alone at the same time. I walked across the road, ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and carried them into the bar. There was only one customer, a man in a linesman’s outfit. He finished his beer and went out, clanking like a walking tool kit.

I put my stuff on the bar and pulled up a stool. “You don’t mind if I sit here?” I asked. “As long as I’m not bothering your regular customer?”

He shrugged, but there was amusement in the level brown eyes. “I’m sorry about that. But you know how it is.”

“Forget it,” I said. He had a clean-cut look about him, and I had a hunch he wasn’t one of the crowd that was on her back. I wished I could be sure.

He came over, propped a foot on the shelf under the bar, and leaned on his knee. He lit a cigarette. “That was a dirty pool, that acid.”

“How did you hear about it?” I asked.

“Saw the stuff over there, where you pulled it out. I went over, and the maid told me about it. Sheriff’s office come up with anything?”

“Not much,” I said. I drank some of the coffee.

“That Redfield’s a good cop. Tougher than a boot, but smart. And honest.”

“Yeah,” I said non-committally. “But why did you ask me?”

“It’s all over town you’ve got some connection with her.”

I nodded. “I didn’t have. But I do now. That acid job was partly my fault.”

“How come?”

“Let me ask you a question first,” I said. “Do you honestly think she was involved in that murder?”

“You want to know what I really think?” He looked me right in the eye. “I think I’ve got a nice place here. Forty thousand dollars’ worth, and I won’t be twenty-seven till next month. It makes me a good living and I like it. So I think whatever my customers think, or I keep my fat mouth shut.”

“Don’t try to snow me,” I said. “You didn’t make all this in your twenties by being bird-brained or gutless. You know damned well what you think, and that is she’s not the type of woman who’d even give Strader the time of day.”

He nodded. “All right. So maybe that’s what I think. I didn’t say it, mind you; you did. So what does it buy? I’ve got a hobby, see—”

“Hobby?”

“Yeah. It’s chasing things. Two things—women and tarpon. And by now I know just about everything there is to know about tarpon, but I still don’t know one damned thing about women. Neither do you.”

“Sure. But you can play the odds. Now, listen—do you recall who used your telephone booth around two yesterday afternoon? A couple of hours before I was here?”

He frowned and shook his head. “I’d probably never notice unless they asked for change. People are in and out of it all the time. Why?”

I told him about the filthy telephone calls and the noisy fan. “Somewhere around town he must have seen me, and caught onto what I was doing. If he was in your lunch-room when she drove home—and I think he was, because he called right afterwards—he also saw me go into the office with her. So he knew me. You don’t remember, then?”

“No-o. There could have been several, but I never pay any attention.”

“Many people in and out of the bar between two and the time I showed up?”

“Half-dozen. Maybe more. It’s hard to say.”

“What about the ones who were here at the same time?”

“Hmmm,” he said. “Let’s see. That big guy was Red Dunleavy. He works at a filling station just up the road. He’s probably made his share of improper suggestions to girls, but he’d make ‘em in person, not over the phone. Rupe Hulbert’s a loud-mouth, and nosy, but generally harmless. But what you’re looking for, Chatham, is a nut. It wouldn’t be any of those guys. Pearl Talley gets off some pretty raw jokes, but nothing like that—”

“What about the guy in the guitar-player's shirt, at the  table with her?”

Ollie grinned briefly. “That’s who I’m talking about. Pearl can be a man’s name too down here. Talley’s a clown type, and to look at him you’d think they had to rope him every morning to put shoes on him, but it’s a front. He’s sharp as a razor in a business deal; he can swap nickels with you, even money, and come out two dollars ahead. Owns several farms around here; runs I cattle on ‘em, mostly.”