Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

I dressed and went up to the lodge on cold and heavy legs and showed the other men what I had found.

Arnie whistled softly, on a diminuendo. “Looks like we’re too late.”

“That remains to be proved. How good is the law around here?”

“Spotty. It’s been improving, but there’s six or seven different jurisdictions around the lake. It spreads the money thin, and also the responsibility.”

“Can you bring the Reno P. D. in on this? It needs lab work.”

“And a dragging operation. It’s not their territory, but I’ll see what I can do. You want to come back to town with me?”

“I should talk to Sholto. Does he live in this neighborhood?”

“A couple of miles from here, on the road to State Line. I’ll drop you.”

Sholto’s boxlike little house stood in a clearing far back from the road. Chickens scratched around it. The young woman who answered the door had a baby on her hip and a slightly larger child hanging onto her skirt. She pushed back her hair and gave Arnie a wide slack smile.

“Hank is out back, Mr. Walters. He’s building a hutch for the rabbits. Come through the house if you want.”

A third child, a girl of eight or nine, was reading a comic book at the kitchen table, simultaneously drinking chocolate milk through a straw. Her bare toes were curled with concentrated pleasure. She regarded us blankly, as though we were less vivid than the characters in her book. I paid particular attention to the child because her towhead was the same color as Harriet’s.

A boy of twelve or so was helping his father in the back yard. That is, he sat on a board laid across wooden horses while Sholto used a handsaw on the board. He was a wiry man of indeterminate age, hipless in faded blue levis. His sun wrinkles gave his jay-blue eyes a fiercely questioning look.

“Hi, Mr. Walters. You find her all right?”

“Not yet. This is my associate Lew Archer. He has some more questions to ask you.”

Sholto laid down his saw and gave me a wide hard hand. “Shoot away.”

“Before you men talk,” Arnie said, “I want to show you a picture, Henry.”

He produced the self-sketch of Campion which he had brought from the car. “Is this the man you saw with Harriet?”

“Sure looks like him. Something funny about the eyes, though. How come one of ’em is bigger than the other?”

“He drew it that way,” I said.

“He drew this himself?”

“That’s right.”

“Why did he do that to the eyes? It makes him look cockeyed. He’s a real nice-lookin’ fellow in real life.”

Arnie lifted the picture from his hands. “Thanks, Henry. I needed a positive identification.”

“Is the guy some kind of a crook?”

“He has a record,” I said. “Maybe you’d better send the boy inside.”

“I don’t wanna go inside.”

“Inside,” Sholto said.

The boy climbed off his board and went. Arnie followed him into the house, with a curt flick of the hand to us. Sholto said to me: “I hope Miss Blackwell isn’t in trouble. She’s a nervous young lady, jumpy as a filly. She wouldn’t take trouble too well.”

“Was she nervous last night when you talked to her?”

He propped one foot up on a sawhorse and rested his arm on his knee. “I’d say she was. Mostly I think she was nervous on account of her father – you know, the young fellow, and them using the lodge. But she had a perfect right – I told Mr. Walters that. And I told her I wouldn’t breathe a word to the old man. After all, she’s used it before when he wasn’t here.”

“With men?”

“I dunno about that. This is the first man she ever brought up here, leastways that I saw. What did the two of them have in mind?”

“They talked about getting married.”

“Is that a fact?”

“You sound surprised.”

“It’s just that I never thought of her as the marrying type. I got a sister teaches school in Porterville, she’s the same way. She’s still living at home.”

“Miss Blackwell isn’t. How were the two of them getting along when you saw them?”

“I didn’t see them together. She came up to the door by herself, wanting the key to the lodge. He stayed in the car.” Sholto pushed back his cap and scratched his freckled hairline, as though to promote the growth of an idea. “They did sit out in the car for quite a while after. The wife thought they were having an argument.”

“Did you hear any of it?”

“I didn’t like to listen,” he said delicately. “Besides, I had the radio on.”

“Did your wife hear any of it?”

“She must of, or how would she know it was an argument?” He raised his voice: “Molly!”

The woman appeared at the back door with the baby on her hip. From the cover of her other hip, the twelve-year-old peered out resentfully.

“What is it, Hank?”

“Last night, when Miss Blackwell came for the key, and they were sitting out in the car after – did you hear anything they said?”

“Yeah. I told you they were having a battle.”

I moved to the foot of the back steps. “Did he hit her?”

“Not that I saw. It was just talk. She didn’t want to go to the lodge. He did.”

“She didn’t want to go?”

“That’s what she said. She said he was trying to use her or something, said he was taking advantage of her love. He said he wasn’t. He said that he was working out his des– destry?”

“Destiny?”

“Yeah, destiny. He said he was working out his destiny or something. I dunno what he meant when he said that. They were talkin’ pretty high-falutin’.”

“How did his voice sound? Was he excited?”

“Naw, he was real cool and cold. She was more hysterical like.”

“Did he threaten her, Mrs. Sholto?”

“I wouldn’t say he threatened her. More like he soothed her down. She was okay when they drove off.”

“Who was driving?”

“He was. She was at the wheel when they were sitting there, but he changed places with her. He did the driving.”

“What time did they leave?”

“I dunno. The clock broke. When are you going to get me a new clock, Hank?”

“Saturday.”

“I bet,” she said serenely, and retreated into the house.

Sholto turned to me. “It was twilight when they left here, nearly night, I’d say around eight o’clock. I didn’t know there was nothin’ wrong or I’d of phoned her father. You think the guy did something to her, eh?”

“We have some evidence that points that way. Was Miss Blackwell wearing a hat when you saw her last night?”

“Yeah, a little hat with a veil. I noticed it because the girls don’t go in for hats around here much.”

“I found her hat in the lake just now,” I said. “With blood and hair on it.”

His eyes went almost out of sight in their twin nests of wrinkles.

“The man she was with, Campion, is implicated in two other murders. One was his wife. Her maiden name was Dolly Stone, and she’s supposed to have spent some time here last summer. Did you ever hear of a Dolly Stone, or Dolly Campion?”

“No, sir. No siree.”

“What about Q. R. Simpson?”

“Come again.”

“Quincy Ralph Simpson. His wife told me he was up here a couple of months ago.”

“Yeah,” he said matter-of-factly, “I knew Ralph. He worked for the Blackwells for a little while, in May I think it was. The Colonel opened the lodge early this year, in April. He told me he wanted to give his new little wife a chance to watch the spring come on.” He paused, and glanced at the declining sun as though to reorient himself in the present day. “Did something happen to Ralph Simpson?”

“He’s the other murder victim. We don’t know for certain that Campion was responsible. The chances are he was. What sort of work was Simpson doing for the Blackwells?”