Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“You didn’t see a car?” Haynes said.

“There wasn’t any unless it was in the barn where Steady keeps that old Cadillac of his.”

“Was the front door locked?”

“It was locked.”

“But you had a key?”

“Of course I had a key.”

“They say anything?”

“Not a word.”

“Were they tall, short, fat, skinny, what?”

“Tall.”

“How were they dressed — other than the sacks?”

“Jeans. Running shoes. Down jackets, one brown, one blue. And gloves. They both wore gloves.”

“What kind?”

“Driving gloves. You know the kind that’re half leather and half knitted with open backs just below the fingers?”

Haynes nodded. “Did you hear them leave?”

“No.”

“Where do you live?”

“Just outside Middleburg.”

“That means you left there when — around seven?”

“Around in there.”

“Why’d you want to get here so early?”

She smiled at him then, displaying some remarkably well cared for teeth. “That sounds like something Steady might’ve asked. Not what the hell were you doing here, but why’d you come so early? Well, the reason is I got worried about old Zip.”

“Who’s he?”

“Steady’s nine-year-old hunter. A bay gelding. I didn’t even think about Zip till late last night and then I almost couldn’t sleep for worrying about whether Steady’d got somebody to look after him or even boarded him out somewhere.”

She stopped talking and stared down into her cup, as if she felt the late Steadfast Haynes was due a second or two of silence. Erika McCorkle quickly ended the silence with a question. “He’d be in the barn if he’s still here?”

Letty Melon looked up and nodded.

“I’ll go look,” Erika McCorkle said, rose, opened the kitchen door, examined it briefly and turned back to Haynes. “They came in here,” she said. “The door’s been jimmied.”

Haynes rose and went over to examine the gouged-out doorjamb. Erika left and Haynes returned to the kitchen table.

“Where’d you all meet?” Letty Melon asked.

“Her father introduced us.”

“They at Steady’s burial?”

“No.”

“I heard it was at Arlington. I didn’t go because, well, because Steady and I’d grown to detest each other in a fairly cordial sort of way.”

Haynes nodded.

“Many people there?”

“Not many.”

“Tinker Burns?”

“Yes.”

“Isabelle?”

“She was there.”

“And you. Anybody else?”

“One or two others.”

“I suppose everybody tells you how much you look like him.”

Haynes again nodded.

“When that closet door opened and I saw you — well, for a second there I thought it was Steady. Or maybe his ghost.”

Haynes smiled slightly, drank the rest of his coffee and said, “What d’you think those two guys wanted?”

“Something to steal.”

“That’s a Rolex you’re wearing. You lit your cigarette with a gold Zippo. They didn’t take those. What about your purse?”

“I carry a wallet,” she said, removed it from her right hip pocket and looked inside. “All my credit cards are still here along with about eighty dollars in cash.”

“Want me to call the sheriff?”

She seemed to think about it as she replaced her wallet. After a couple of slow headshakes, she said, “I wasn’t robbed and I wasn’t really hurt — except for some bruised dignity. But I can get over that without any help from the sheriff.” She looked around the kitchen, as if searching for any other major changes her ex-husband might have made. When she was done, she looked at Haynes and said, “He leave this place to you?”

“To Isabelle,” Haynes said.

If he hadn’t been watching for it, Haynes might not have noticed the slight tremor that barely rippled her shoulders. “Isabelle,” she said, pouring another measure of whisky into her glass. She drank the whisky, put her cigarette out, lit another one and said, “I suppose she’ll sell it.”

“Isabelle’s dead.”

She stared at him, eyes wide, as a flush began at the base of her neck and rushed to her cheeks. “When?”

“Yesterday afternoon. In her apartment on Connecticut Avenue. Tinker Burns and I found her — more or less.”

“Well, did you or didn’t you?”

“Tinker found her and when I got there a few minutes later, he took me into the bathroom. Isabelle was lying in a tub of water with her wrists and ankles wired.”

Haynes couldn’t decide whether it was a delayed reaction to her own ordeal or the shock of Isabelle Gelinet’s death that caused Letty Melon to tremble and then to shake. She was still shaking, although not nearly as much, when Erika McCorkle came through the kitchen door and said, without preamble, “There’s a dead horse in the barn.”

Zip, the nine-year-old bay gelding, apparently had gone down on his forelegs first because they were still tucked beneath him. His rear legs were splayed out to the side. His head rested on the fairly clean straw in his stall. The feed bin was half full and there was water in a wooden tub made from a large barrel that had been sawed in half. He had been shot once through the white blaze that formed a rough diamond between his eyes.

Letty Melon, no longer shaking, ran a gentle hand down his neck. She looked up and said, “He’s still almost warm.” She rose, glanced around the stall and said, “Poor old Zip.”

“Did you hear the shot, Letty?” Erika McCorkle asked.

“No, but he could’ve been dead when I got here.”

She took what seemed to be a long last look at the dead Zip, turned and walked to the center of the barn where four Dukakis posters had been arranged to catch a car’s slight oil leak and prevent it from soaking into the barn’s hard-packed dirt floor. Letty Melon stood for a moment, staring down at the Dukakis signs, then turned to Haynes and said, “Somebody pick up his old Cadillac?”

“His lawyer sent someone.”

“It was a mistake.”

“What?” Haynes said.

“My coming here. If I’d known about Isabelle, I wouldn’t’ve come near the place. With both her and Steady dead, it makes me look like a ghoul.” She paused, took a deep breath and said, “Look. I don’t want to have anything more to do with Steady Nothing at all ever again.”

Haynes nodded.

“I want to go home now.”

“Fine.”

“And after I get there, I don’t want any calls or visits from the Clarke County sheriff or his deputies.”

Haynes again nodded.

“You going to talk to him — the sheriff?”

“I have to.”

“But you won’t mention me?”

“No.”

“Or the guys with sacks over their heads?”

“If I don’t tell the sheriff about you, I can’t tell him about them.”

“Well, what are you gonna tell him?”

Haynes turned to look at the dead Zip. “I’m going to ask him what to do with a dead horse.”

Haynes got the number of the sheriff’s office in Berryville from directory assistance. After the man who answered said he was Deputy Soullard, Haynes identified himself and reported the death of the.horse.

The deputy put Haynes on hold until a stern baritone voice came on, announced that it belonged to Sheriff Jenkins Shipp-with-two- p ’s and asked, “You Steady’s boy?”—somehow turning the abrupt question into a warm greeting.

After Haynes replied yes, Sheriff Shipp asked, “What’s your name again?”

“Granville Haynes.”

“I’m sure sorry about your daddy, Granville, and I do mourn his passing”

“You’re very kind.”

“Now what’s this about old Zip?”

Haynes said he had arrived at the farm to discover the horse had been shot and killed.