The Outrage - Edge Series 3 (12 page)

Edge broke in evenly: ‘I figure what you ladies ought to do is take what you’re owed out of the cash drawer. And it’s up to you to close the place or keep it open until Quinn’s lawyer tells you what to do about it. He’s out of town right now. Far as the house is concerned, a couple of rooms there could use some attention. I guess it won’t do any harm if you take care of what needs doing if you want to, Mrs Mandrell. And pay yourself out of the takings of this place.’

The mother and daughter both frowned doubtfully as the older woman shook her head and said: ‘That don’t seem right to me, mister.’

Edge shrugged, sipped the watery coffee again and pushed the cup and saucer away.

‘You asked me and I’ve told you what I think. I guess it’s not strictly according to the law after somebody’s died and there’s no next of kin to tell you what to do. But Devlin is Quinn’s lawyer and he’s not around to say what the law is.’

Muriel nodded but was clearly unconvinced. ‘We’re both much obliged to you, mister.’

‘No sweat.’

Blanche definitely gave a little bob now, before she hurried back across the café and went behind the counter. Where she and her mother put their heads together to engage in low toned discussion. During the exchange they often glanced sceptically at Edge. Then they reached a decision and the mother raised a tin tray and brought it down with a crash on the counter top as her daughter went back through the curtained archway.

‘Ladies! Mr Edge! There is no great rush, but Blanche and me are gonna close the coffee shop. So we’d be obliged if you would all finish up and leave.’

There was a discordant swell of indignant protest that was silenced by another bang of the tray on the counter.

‘Just for awhile, as far as we know. Until we can talk with Mr Devlin when he gets back. Find out about how we stand here. Maybe we ought to have kept the place closed today, out of respect for Nancy and her ma and pa. But it’s too late to worry about that now.’ She shrugged. ‘Nothing like this ever happened to us before.’

‘I tell you something, Muriel, nothing like this ever happened to anybody in this town before,’ the stoutly built, plump faced, bespectacled Miss Louisa Barry said and drew a chorus of earnest agreement.

Muriel Mandrell withdrew into a mood of frowning introspection and became totally oblivious to her surroundings for perhaps two minutes. And her elderly female customers resumed voicing their resentment in lower tones as their coffee and cakes were forgotten. While Edge took out the makings and rolled a cigarette, his masculine presence in this feminine preserve ignored.

Then she abruptly snapped out of her morose reverie to announce firmly: ‘All right, ladies. You’ve had enough time to finish what you’ve paid for. I’m gonna close the place up now.’

She came out from behind the counter and crossed the café to jerk open the door, shook her head and gestured with a dismissive hand toward several complainants. Then the disgruntled matrons began to file outside while Edge remained at the table and held off from lighting the cigarette until there was just Blanche behind the counter and her mother beside the door when he rose, picked up his hat and made to leave.

‘Ma!’ Blanche prompted.

‘There’s something my girl thinks I ought to tell you about, mister,’ the older woman said. ‘Either you or Vic Meeker?’

Edge stepped out over the threshold. ‘The sheriff and his deputy have gone to Austin on law business, Mrs Mandrell.’

‘It’s
miss!’
she corrected firmly with a hard glitter of determination in her eyes. ‘Even though I’ve got a daughter. I’ll tell you that before wagging tongues get around to doing it. But that’s by the by. What I need to tell you or Mr Meeker is that old Joe Kellner has been hanging around out near the Quinn house a couple of times lately. While Mr Quinn was away from home on business.’

Edge moved to his horse standing at the hardware store hitching rail. ‘Joe Kellner?

That’s the told timer wears a seaman’s cap and totes a shotgun?’

‘That’s him. Some kind of funny looking hat anyways. A crazy old man, some say. Call him Crazy Joe, them that think it. Sixty or maybe even seventy, he is. Lives in a tumbledown old cabin not far from the Quinn house. Out in what’s known as Avery Valley Woods. Always firing off his shotgun out there in the trees. Drinks too much and dresses in ragged old clothes. Never seems to wash over much. They reckon he only ever takes a bath once in a blue moon. And then only in the creeks that runs through the valley into the river.’

Edge unhitched his reins. ‘How do you mean, hanging around the Quinn house?’

‘When I been out there cleaning. Crazy Joe has been hired on every now and then to do gardening chores and fence painting and work like that for the Quinns. I ain’t never known him come by when Mr Quinn was away before though. But I seen Joe Kellner twice while the man of the house was gone this last time.’

‘Obliged to you for telling me, Miss Mandrell.’ He swung up into the saddle.

‘And I’ll be obliged to you if you don’t tell him what I said, mister.’

‘You scared of him, lady?’

She expressed mild apprehension and shrugged. ‘The old man’s a strange creature and no mistake. But he ain’t never done anybody any harm, far as I know. There’s something odd about him, though. The way he gets a wild look in his eyes every now and then . . . And how he totes that shotgun around all the time . . . Well, I’m not the only one to say Crazy Joe Kellner gives them the creeps.’ She shrugged again. ‘Course, there are others who have only pity for the man.’

Edge put on his hat and hung the cigarette at the side of his mouth. Wheeled the horse away from the rail and raised a hand in impassive farewell to the Mandrell women before he turned the corner on to the Old Town Road. Took another slow and easy rider out to the Quinn house, feeling disconcertingly ill at ease on this bright morning in such tranquil surroundings and knowing exactly why this was. For he had felt much the same sense of disquiet during his stay at the Pine Wells way station. He was not the do-nothing kind: preferred either to be engaged in doing something to his advantage or to be on the move, heading in the direction of a place where there was the prospect he would find something profitable to occupy himself. At Pine Wells he had been forced by circumstances to remain uselessly idle until his sick horse recovered or, as things turned out, he traded the animal for a stage ticket and continued his trip toward Austin. And now here in Springdale while he was stalled by the inviting prospect of earning two thousand dollars he could do little or nothing constructive until he knew the outcome of Meeker’s trip to Austin.

Then, as he rode up the gravel driveway toward the Quinn house he saw that events might well give him something useful to do fill his time in the immediate future. For it seemed he was going to get to talk with the eccentric old man who had been seen where he had no good reason to be in the days immediately prior to the Quinn murders. Albeit that the killings were not committed with a shotgun and were preceded by a rape unlikely to have been perpetrated by a man close to seventy.

Joe Kellner was sleeping soundly, slumped in one of the rustic chairs on the terrace, his splayed feet up on a rough-hewn table. The double barrel shotgun leaned against the side of the table.

He came awake with a startled yell when Edge advanced to within ten feet of him and even at this distance and in the open air Edge was aware of the old man’s ripe smell. Then Kellner struggled rheumatically to his feet, snatched up the shotgun, stumbled and would have tipped over his own feet had Edge not reached out and grasped him by the bony arm.

‘Hey, you let me be!’ Kellner took a backward step and wrenched free of the hold on his elbow: expression pathetic guilt and fear like he had been caught doing something wrong. ‘I can use this weapon real good! And it’s got a load in both barrels.’

Kellner looked like he may have been tall and broadly built when he was younger. But now his frame was shrunken inside his loose skin and he was hunched by age and perhaps by the way a cruel life and unkind fellowmen had treated him during his later advancing years. He was raggedly dressed in torn dungarees, a filthy shirt, scuffed boots and the seafarer’s cap. It had been a long time since he had groomed his bushy grey hair and several days when he last shaved. Almost toothless except for some blackened pegs in the top gum on just one side of his slack mouth, Edge could understand how Kellner had an appearance likely to unnerve the more susceptible elderly ladies of Springdale.

Especially when he was as angry as now, his watery grey eyes showing a dangerous glitter as Edge told him: ‘If I even think you’re going to get beyond just talking about firing that scattergun at me, feller, I’ll ram it up your ass and pull both triggers. Or maybe I’ll just jiggle it around some to stir up the crap you’re full of. Joe Kellner, that right?’

The old man blinked rapidly and swallowed hard, ‘How d’you know who I am?’

‘I heard a feller with your description lived close to Springdale. Figured there couldn’t be more than one crazy old buzzard like you in this part of the country.’

‘Who’re you?’ His hot temper was cooling and now that he took the time to peer more closely at the man who towered head and shoulders over him it was clear he remembered seeing him before,

‘Name’s Edge.’

Kellner nodded and became pensive for a few moments. ‘Yeah, I got you pinned down in my mind now. Guy that got off the stage with Mr Quinn as I recall.’ He waved toward the dappled grey hitched at the foot of the terrace steps. ‘And that’s one of Mr Quinn’s horses you got there.’

‘That’s good.’

‘What is?’

‘That you notice things. I’d like to ask you some questions.’

‘And what if I wouldn’t like to answer none from somebody I don’t know?’

Edge dug into a pants pocket and brought out a house key that he showed the grimacing old man. ‘I can get us inside and I’ve got the run of the place. Means I can offer you a drink or fine whiskey if I’ve a mind to.’

‘I ain’t so sure about that.’ He was still as uneasily mistrustful as ever. Then Edge thrust forward a hand, fisted it around the twin muzzles of the uncocked shotgun and jerked the weapon violently out of Kellner’s grip. The old man vented another cry of alarm and whined: ‘You can’t do that!’

Edge shook his head and sighed as he canted the shotgun to his shoulder, upside down: showed a narrow lipped, glinting eyed smile when he corrected the indignant man. ‘As far as you’re concerned right now, old timer, I can do whatever the hell I damn well like.’

Kellner gulped and shifted from one foot to the other.

‘For instance,’ Edge went on. ‘I can take you into the house, see that you’re comfortable, give you a drink of top quality liquor and we can talk polite to each other. Or else I can toss you back down on that seat and beat the shit out of you until you’ve told me all you know about the killing of the Quinn women.’

Kellner eyed Edge with genuine fear for stretched seconds, then showed an expression that could have been an attempt at an ingratiating grin. But because of his lack of teeth and the way he screwed up his moist eyes it was difficult to be certain. Until he said with what could have been a terse laugh: ‘You wouldn’t really hurt a poor old man like me, would you, Mr Edge?’

‘There’s a good reason why you’re not breaking my heart, feller.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Kellner was perplexed and nervous in equal measure.

‘Because I’m a poor old man myself. You’ve got a few more years on me and I guess I take a bath more often than you do is about all. And for the kind of money I’m getting paid to find out who killed the Quinn women, I’m ready to cause you every kind of pain there is if that’s what it takes to make me a much richer old man.’

‘Hell, I really think you mean what you say, Mr Edge.’ He nodded rapidly and licked his cracked lips.

‘Believe what you really think, feller. Or the next sound you hear won’t be of my heart breaking. It’ll be of me snapping one of your bones.’

CHAPTER • 8

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EDGE WENT ahead of the uneasy Kellner into the house, intending to take him into
the study. But the rancid smell of the old man’s unwashed flesh and clothing was a lot more intense inside the house than out and the study was less than half the size of the spacious parlour. So he turned off the hallway into the larger room but for a stretched second Kellner held back tentatively on the threshold and gazed fixedly down at the blanket spread on the carpet nearby. Then he asked thickly: