Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“What?”

“The bony eyebrows are a family trait. The old man has ’em, and all the ancestors. Harriet wears dark glasses part of the time. I assume you know what Campion looks like.”

“I have him memorized,” Royal said.

“Picture?”

“No picture. That’s how he got across the border.”

“I have one. I’ll try to get a copy of it into your hands today. Now there’s a possibility that Campion and the girl have doubled back toward Mexico. Nevada is another possibility. They were talking about getting married, and it’s an easy state to get married in. They may be married now, or representing themselves as married.”

“The girl must be crazy,” Royal said, “if she knows what he did to his wife and still wants to marry him.”

“I’m not suggesting she knows about the wife. He probably faked a story to explain the aliases, and she would be easily taken in. She’s crazy in the sense that she’s crazy about him. Also, she’s in active revolt against her father. She’s twenty-four, as I said, and he treats her as if she was four.”

“Isn’t twenty-four a little late for the big rebellion?”

“Harriet has been living under military occupation. She’s a fugitive from injustice.”

“So she takes up with a fugitive from justice. I’ve seen it happen before.” Royal paused. “How much danger do you think she’s in?”

“You’d know more about that than I do, Captain. It depends on Campion’s motivation. Harriet’s due to come into money on her twenty-fifth birthday, so if it’s money he’s after, she’s safe for the next six months. Did Campion kill his wife for money?”

“There wasn’t any money, so far as we know. We haven’t been able to uncover any motive at all. Which means he could be off his rocker. A lot of these creeps who call themselves artists are nuts. He lived like a bum in a remodeled garage near Luna Bay, everything in one room.” Royal’s voice was scornful.

“Did he have a record of irrational behavior?”

“I wouldn’t know. He has a record, period. A year’s hard labor and a dishonorable discharge for assaulting an officer during the Korean War. That’s all we’ve been able to dig up on him, but it shows a history of violence. Also he wasn’t getting along with his wife. Put the two together, it’s all you need in the way of motive.”

“Tell me about the wife.”

“That can wait, can’t it, Archer? I want to get your info out on the wires.”

“You could give me a quick rundown.”

Royal said in a clipped, toneless voice: “Her name was Dolly Stone Campion, age about twenty, pretty little blonde, not so pretty when we found her. According to our info, Campion picked her up on the South Shore of Tahoe last summer, and married her in Reno in September. It must have been a marriage of inconvenience – Dolly was three months pregnant at the time. At least their child was born in March, six months after the wedding. Two months after that he knocked her off.”

“Tahoe keeps cropping up,” I said. “The Blackwells have a lodge there, and Q. R. Simpson spent some time at the lake in May, shortly before he was murdered.”

“What was he doing there?”

“I have a hunch he was working on the Dolly Campion case. What happened to her baby, by the way?”

“Her mother took him. Look, Archer, this could go on all day, and I have work to do. A lot more work than I had before,” he added wryly. “Will you be coming up this way?”

“As soon as I can make it.”

Which wasn’t soon. I made a second call to Arnie Walters’s office in Reno. I wanted to pass the word on Campion and ask Arnie to add more men to the search. He already had, Phyllis told me, because Campion and Harriet Blackwell had been seen in State Line the previous night. That was all so far.

I dropped the receiver into its cradle. When I picked it up, it felt appreciably heavier. I called the airport and made a reservation on the next flight to Reno. They were going to have to give me flying pay.

As I was getting up from the desk, I noticed a folded newspaper which lay on the back of it. “San Mateo Man,” I spelled out upside down. I unfolded the paper.

It was yesterday’s issue of the Citrus Junction News-Beacon. The full headline ran across the top of the page: “San Mateo Man Killed Here: Police Suspect Gang Murder.” The story under it was poorly written and poorly printed, and it told me nothing I didn’t already know.

I still had the paper in my hands when Blackwell came into the room. He looked like the ghost of one of his ancestors.

“What are you doing with that newspaper?”

“I was wondering how it got into your house.”

“That’s no concern of yours, I should think.” He snatched it away from me and rolled it up small. “A number of things are no concern of yours. For example, I’m not paying out good money to have myself and my daughter slandered to policemen.”

“I thought I heard somebody on another extension. Does everyone in your household eavesdrop on everyone else?”

“That’s an insulting remark. I demand that you withdraw it.”

Blackwell was shaking with another bout of uncontrollable anger. The rolled newspaper vibrated in his hand. He slapped his thigh with it, as if it was a swagger stick or a riding crop. He looked ready to strike me with it, and challenge me to a duel.

“I can’t change facts, Colonel. If you don’t like what you heard, you could have stopped listening.”

“Are you telling me what to do in my own house?”

“It does sound like it, doesn’t it?”

“Then get out of my house. Get out, do you hear?”

“They hear you in Tarzana . Don’t you want your daughter found?”

“We’ll find her without your help. You’re fired.”

“You’ve already had my help,” I said. “You owe me three hundred and fifty dollars for time and expenses.”

“I’ll write you a check, now?”

“You can stop payment on a check. I need cash.”

I was playing for time in the faint hope that Blackwell would come to his senses, as he had once before. Though I couldn’t knuckle under to him, I was eager to hold on to the case. It was beginning to break, and a breaking case to a man in my trade is like a love affair you can’t stay away from, even if it tears your heart out daily.

“I don’t have that much in the house,” he was saying. “I’d have to cash a check at the hotel.”

“Do that. I’ll wait here.”

“Outside,” he said in a monitory tone. “I don’t want you prying around in here. You can wait in your car.”

I went down the hall and out, with Blackwell making shooing motions at my kidneys. He backed his black Cadillac out of the garage and drove away down the hill. I put in a bad ten minutes deciding where to go from here. It would have to be Tahoe, though I hated to make the trip on my own time.

The mourning dove had returned to the television antenna. He sat there still and perfect as a heraldic bird. I said hoo-hoo to him and got a response, hoo-hoo, and I felt better.

Isobel Blackwell, driving a small foreign car, came into the driveway from the road. I got out of my car to meet her. Her face looked wan in the sunlight, but she made herself smile at me.

“Mr. Archer! What a pleasant surprise.”

“Didn’t Letty get in touch with you?”

“I left the hospital early. I’ve been concerned about Mark.”

“You have some reason to be. He had a fainting spell a while ago. Then he had a yelling spell.”

“Mark fainted?”

“I gave him some information that hit him hard.”

She ducked out of her little car and thrust her face up toward mine. “Something has happened to Harriet.”

“We don’t know that. But something could happen to her any time. She’s wandering around Nevada with the man who calls himself Damis. His actual name is Bruce Campion, and he’s wanted in Redwood City for murdering his wife.”