Charles Williams - Man on a Leash

“I’ll see.” He went out into the kitchen. There were several bottles of beer. He listened intently for the sound of the latches, but her continued chatter would have covered it if there were any. Somehow he’d have to get a peek into that straw handbag. He found some glasses and a bottle opener and poured the beer. He went back, and on the opposite side of the case from her there was just a fraction of an inch of brown silk showing where she hadn’t got all the robe back in. He handed her the glass and sat down.

“Thank you, Eric.” She smiled. “As I was saying, he was the most fascinating man I ever met—”

“You’d better run it through a laundromat before you wear it again,” he said.

“What?” Just for a second the confusion showed. “I don’t understand— Wear what?”

“The doily. It’s been shut up in a suitcase for two weeks with a box of cigars. It’ll smell like the end of a four-day poker game.”

“Well!” The outrage was just about to become airborne when it collapsed in a gurgle of amusement that gave way to laughter. “Oh, crap! So you had found it.” She lifted the hairpiece from her handbag, sniffed it, made a face, and dropped it back.

“It was a stupid thing to try, anyway,” he said. “Brubaker’s bound to have seen it when he searched the house, and he’ll know you were the only one who had a chance to get it back.”

She shrugged, took a pack of filter cigarettes from the handbag, and lighted one. “Brubaker could already make a damned good guess whose it is, but he’s not about to.”

“Why not?”

“He’d have to be ready to prove it, for one thing, unless he likes the odor of singed tail feathers. Also, he’d have to be damned sure it had anything to do with what happened to your father. Which it didn’t.”

“That remains to be seen. But he could sure as hell sweat some answers out of you about what the old man was doing in San Francisco and why he needed that money.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t in San Francisco with him.”

“Sure. You just loaned him the rug. He was going to audition for a job at Finocchio’s—”

“Oh, I was with him, all right, but it was in Las Vegas.”

“What? I mean—when?”

“Before he went to San Francisco. We drove down on the Fourth—”

“Hold it. You say you drove? Which car?”

“His.”

“How far is it?”

“Four hundred and five miles. We checked it.”

“Excuse me a minute.” He strode out to the garage and opened the door of the Mercedes to check the figures again: 13,937 less 13,073 was—864. Twice 405 was 810. That left only 54 miles unaccounted for.

“What is it?” She had come out and was standing in the kitchen doorway.

He indicated the service sticker. “He couldn’t have driven the car to San Francisco. Or even to Reno to take a plane.” He repeated the figures. “So how did he get there?”

“Maybe somebody else drove him to the airport.”

“You’d think whoever it was would have said so by this time. Anyway, Brubaker checked the airlines; he had no reservation any time in that period.”

She frowned. “Well, we’d better tell him. I didn’t know about this mileage bit.”

“I’ll do it. Maybe he won’t lean on me for the name.”

“Oh, hell, that’s all right. I mean, if it’s important to the investigation. I’m not married, now. Or running for the school board.”

“Was the car this dusty when you got back?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was dark. But I don’t see why it would have been; we certainly didn’t drive on any country roads, going or coming, and it wasn’t dusty like that when we got there.”

He nodded. Then a good part of that 54 miles had been on a dirt road. They went back to the living room, and he retrieved his beer. “How long did you stay in Las Vegas?” he asked.

“That night and the next day. I think we started back around eleven P.M. Anyway, he let me off at my place just a few minutes before five A.M.” She sighed. “Forty hours with about two hours’ sleep. God, I’m glad I didn’t have to try to keep up with him when he was twenty-eight—”

“Wait a minute,” Romstead interrupted. “That’d have to be five A.M., the sixth?”

“Hmmmm—yes, that’s right.”

Just two hours, he thought, before he’d called Winegaard with that sell order. “Well, look, did he go in the bucket in Las Vegas? I mean, on the cuff, for really big money?”

She smiled. “God, no. I doubt he lost twenty dollars. Gambling—or that kind of gambling—bored him to death. He said anybody with any respect for mathematics would have to be insane to think he could beat a house percentage and a limit. He just liked the shows, and the fact that nobody ever goes to bed—to sleep, anyway.”

“Well, did he tell you he was going to San Francisco?”

“No.”

“That’s funny. No mention of it at all?”

“Not a word. If it’d been anybody else, it would have puzzled hell out of me. I mean, if he was planning to take off again just as soon as we got home, you’d think he’d have said something about it, just to make conversation if nothing else, but that’s the way he operated.”

“But nobody knows for sure when he did leave.”

“Oh, it was within a few hours. Don’t ask me how in hell he could do it, but he was gone again before noon.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s when I woke up. When I started to unpack my bags, I noticed the fall was missing, so I called to see if I’d put it in his by mistake. No answer. I tried again several times in the afternoon and gave up.”

“Well, did he say anything about a business deal?”

“Absolutely nothing. But then he wouldn’t have; he never did.”

“You know Brubaker’s theory? That he was mixed up in the drug traffic.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m glad you don’t believe it. But I guess we’re in the minority.”

“Darling, I have no illusions at all about your old man; I’ve known him longer than you think I have. He was arrogant, pigheaded, and intolerant, he had the sex drive and the fidelity of a stallion, and any woman who could stay married to him for fifteen years the way your mother did could qualify for instant sainthood; but he wasn’t a criminal.”

“You knew him before he moved here?”

“Umh-umh. He saved my life, a few years back.”

“How’s that?”

“It sounds a little kooky, out here in the sagebrush, but would you believe a rescue at sea?” She glanced at her watch and stood up. “But I’ve got to run. If you’ll stop by when you get through here, I’ll hammer together a couple of bloody Marys and a bite of lunch and tell you about it.”

“I’d love to. Thank you.”

He went out with her and down the walk. As she started to get into the Continental, there was a sudden wild clatter of the pipes in the cattle guard beyond them, and a dusty green Porsche came snarling up the drive. It pulled off and stopped on the other side of her. When the driver emerged and slammed the door, there was more an impression he had simply removed the car like an article of clothing and tossed it aside rather than got out of it, and Romstead thought of the old joke about one of the Rams’ linemen: When he couldn’t find a place to park his VW, he just carried it around with him.

While he wasn’t quite that big, he would have made an ominous hunk of linebacker staring hungrily across the big butts at a quarterback. He was pushing forty now, Romstead thought, and a little gone to belly, but not too much, and the pale eyes were mean as he padded around the rear of the Continental. Something was riding him.

“I tried to call you,” he said to Paulette Carmody. “Carmelita said you were down here. Figures.”