Маргарет Миллар - Do Evil In Return

“What bar?”

“Sullivan’s. Sullivan’s been dead for ten years, but they still call it that.” He stopped, looking a little embarrassed. “If you should want a drink there are places better than Sullivan’s. I mean, it’s not a very high-class establishment, that’s what I mean.”

A car with a skiff strapped to its top turned in from the highway and Mr. Coombs waddled over to meet it.

The sign, Sullivan’s Log Cabin, was hung between two posts just off the highway, but the building itself was set a hundred yards back from the road in a grove of redwoods. There was a cleared space for parking to the left of the sign. Charlotte left her car there and began walking up the footpath to the bar. There had once been a string of lights along the path but the bulbs had worn out or been broken; only the wires and empty sockets remained, and fragments of glass that crunched under Charlotte’s feet In spite of the brisk wind a sour smell rose from the ground, as if a long succession of drunks had tottered down the path, paused to be sick, and gone on. In the east a full moon was rising but its pallid light couldn’t penetrate the trees, and Charlotte had to feel her way timidly along the path.

She stopped suddenly and looked back over her shoulder — an instinctive movement; she’d heard nothing behind her, but she had an overwhelming impulse to look around.

A man stepped out from behind a tree, a tall man with massive sloping shoulders that gave his body an aspect of menace.

“Hello, Charlotte.”

“Oh. I... you startled me.”

“I hope so,” Easter said. He sounded angry. “Quite a fast one you pulled, coming here ahead of me.”

“I didn’t intend it as a ‘fast one.’ I merely drove up to...”

“Get some fresh air. I know. Well, now that fate and a mutual interest in fresh air has brought us together, let me buy you a drink.”

“No thanks.”

“Weren’t you on your way into Sullivan’s?”

“No.”

“Just out for a stroll, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t snap. It’s unbecoming.” He took her arm. “Come on, Charlotte. You and I have some things to discuss.”

“What things?”

“Things,” he said vaguely.

His hand on her arm was firm and surprisingly reassuring. She realized that this strange, somber place frightened her, and her fear of Easter was lost in the more immediate fear of walking alone up the dark path.

He matched his step to hers. “I talked to Mrs. Reyerling. She told me about the ‘nice-looking lady’ who claimed to be a friend of Violet’s.”

“Oh?”

“About the only additional fact that I learned about Violet was that she couldn’t swim. But — there was a girl with Mrs. Reyerling in the apartment, a Miss Morris. She seemed very quiet, very nervous.”

“Well, I didn’t make her quiet and nervous, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I didn’t imply it. But it’s a thought — maybe you did.”

“How?”

“Why don’t you tell me? ” Easter said.

“I like to see you guess, you’re so good at it.”

“All right, I’ll guess that she gave you some information and you asked her not to tell me for some reason. You’re quite a devious character, Charlotte, in spite of that honest pan, that let’s-put-all-our-cards-on-the-table look.”

“You’re awfully quarrelsome, aren’t you?”

“I don’t think so. I get along all right with other people.”

“So do I. By the way, I don’t very much like being leaped at from behind trees. It’s cute and boyish and all that, but it gives me a pain.”

His teeth gleamed white in the darkness. “I’ll have to keep on giving you a pain if I can’t get any other reaction.”

Sullivan’s was a long narrow building made of logs, with Acme on Tap written across the front window in green neon. Inside, a middle-aged man in levis was playing two nickel slot-machines alternating between them with such quick precision that he seemed to be working a machine in a factory rather than enjoying himself. At the bar two men were studying a racing form, checking selections with a pencil, conferring in whispers, checking again. Sullivan’s had an air of deadly earnestness.

The bartender was young and bored.

“Beer for me, please,” Charlotte said.

“Make it two. Easter flipped a coin on the counter. “Things slow tonight, eh?”

“Slow every night at this time. It’s too early. The afternoon drunks haven’t had a chance to sober up and come back again.”

Easter sipped his beer. It tasted metallic. “I see O’Gorman’s not around any more.”

“He quit last week. You a friend of his?”

“We have a lot in common.”

“I heard just tonight that he’s back in town,” the bartender said.

“Good. I’d like to catch up with him again.”

“I figure it’s just a rumor, though. This guy that claims he saw him said O’Gorman was driving a new Ford convertible. O’Gorman’s car was an old Plymouth that couldn’t do fifty if it was going downhill. You don’t get rich tending bar, believe you me.”

“Funny if he’s in town and didn’t call me. I’m kind of disappointed.”

“Yeah?” The bartender blinked. “I wouldn’t be too disappointed.”

“If he shows, tell him Easter is looking for him, Jim Easter.”

“He won’t show. He stuck me with a bum check for ten dollars. That and the convertible don’t make sense, unless the car’s hot.”

“Maybe it is.”

“A cop, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want any trouble here.”

“You won’t get any.”

“That’s a promise. I hope.” He ambled down to the other end of the bar and began talking to the two men who were bent over the racing form.

“So that’s the real reason you came up here,” Charlotte said. “Not to talk to Violet’s sister, but to look for O’Gorman and Voss.”

“Both. There was an off-chance that O’Gorman might be stupid enough to come home. In fact, he may not even know there’s a warrant out for him and Voss. The last report I had on O’Gorman was that he was heading north. He sold his ‘38 Plymouth at Crescent City for a hundred and fifty dollars. That’s about fifty dollars less than the list price, and after the deal was closed the new owner got a little suspicious about it. He called the local police and they called us.” He drained his glass. “This is the first I’ve heard about the Ford convertible, though. It makes it fairly certain that he’s around here someplace, not to stay, probably, but to do a little showing off in front of the home-town folks.”

“How could he buy a new car? He had no money.”

“He has now. What I’d like to know is where he got it. Any ideas?”

“No.”

“Sure of that?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Not even one tiny idea?”

“No! What are you getting at? I... you’re confusing me. You don’t think that I gave O’Gorman the money? I didn’t. When I went there, he and Voss had already gone.”

“Let’s be confused together,” Easter said lightly. “You know, I went to a lot of trouble for the privilege of buying you a beer.”

“Trouble?”

“Of course I didn’t think it would end up the way it did. I’m an incurable optimist. I figured that you would drive up here with me and give me a chance to parade my wit and charm etcetera, and we would return home, you with the first flush of love on your cheeks, and me feeling the same way as I did when I started. As I do now. Well,” he added, “it didn’t work out.”

“I’m beginning to see a little light.”

“Yes? Tell me about it.”

“It concerns a doctor I know called Bill Blake.”