Rex Stout: Death of a Dude

"Maybe we could sit and talk a little," I said.

Her head was tilted back because her eyes were nine inches lower than mine. "I told you," she said, "I'm talked out. But all right."

She turned and I followed her into what they called the front room, but they could have called it the trophy room. Harvey and Carol, his wife, had formerly both been rodeo stars, and the walls were covered with pictures-him bulldogging steers and both of them riding broncs and tying calves. Also there were displays of ribbons they had won, and medals, and in a glass case on a table was a big silver cup Harvey had got one year at Calgary, with his name engraved on it. Alma went to a couch by the fireplace and sat with her legs crossed, and I took a nearby chair. Her skirt was mini-she never wore shorts-but her legs were no match for Diana's, in either length or caliber. There was nothing wrong with what there was of them.

"You look all right," I said. "You're getting your sleep."

She nodded. "Go right ahead. Ride me. I'm saddlebroke."

"You chew the bit." I regarded her. "Look, Alma. I love you dearly, we all love you, but can't you get it in your head that someone is going to take the rap for killing Philip Brodell, and it's going to be your father unless we produce a miracle?"

"This is Montana," she said.

"Yeah. The Treasure State. Gold and silver."

"My father won't take any rap. This is Montana. They'll acquit him."

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody had to tell me. I was born here."

"But too late. Fifty years ago, or even less, a Montana jury might not convict a man who had shot a man who had seduced his daughter. But not today, not even if you go on the stand with the baby in your arms and say you're glad he killed him. I've decided to tell you exactly what I think. I think you have an idea about who did kill him, maybe even actual knowledge, and you don't want him to take the rap, and you think your father won't have to because they won't convict him. You've admitted you're glad somebody killed him."

"I didn't say that."

"Nuts. I can repeat it verbatim, all of it. You're glad he's dead."

"All right, I am."

"And you don't want anybody to get tagged for it. For instance, suppose you have reason to think that Gil Haight killed him. Gil says he was in Timberburg all day that Thursday, he has told several people that, but suppose you know he wasn't? Suppose he was here that day, and he said things, and from here it's only a couple of miles to where Brodell was shot, and he had a gun in his car. But you're saving it because you think your father will be acquitted, and you also think that if he isn't, if he's convicted of first-degree murder and sent up, you could get him out by telling then what you know. Well, you couldn't, for several reasons, the best one being that nobody would believe you. But if you tell me now I can take it from there and we'll see what happens. Gil Haight would stand as good a chance as your father does. He's a local boy with a clean record, and he was hoping to marry you, and when the man who had seduced you last summer showed up again this summer he went off his nut. At least as good a chance as your father, maybe better."

There was a sound from the other side of an open door, not the one to the hall, which could have been a baby turning over and kicking the crib, and she turned her head. Silence, and she returned to me. "Gil wasn't here that day," she said.

"I didn't say he was, I was only supposing. There are other possibilities. Someone might have killed him for some other reason, nothing to do with you. If so, the reason was probably a carry-over from last year, because Brodell had only been here three days this year. If it was something from last year, for instance some kind of trouble with Farnham, he might have mentioned it to you. When a man gets close enough with a woman to make a baby he might mention anything. Damn it, if you would drop your cockeyed idea that your father will be acquitted, and put your mind on it, you might give me a start."

Her lips almost made the smile. "You think my mind's not on it?"

"Your feelings are on it, but your mind, no."

"Certainly my mind's on it." She uncrossed her legs and put her hands on her knees. "Listen, Archie. I've told you ten times, I think my father killed him."

"And I've told you ten times, you can't. I don't believe it. You're not a halfwit, and you'd have to be one to live with him nineteen years and not-"

A voice said, "She's not a halfwit, she's just a dope."

Carol was there in the doorway. "My daughter," she said, "the only one I've got, and what a piece of luck that was." She was coming. "You might as well quit on her. I have." She looked down at Alma. "Please go and milk a mule or something. I want to talk with Archie."

Alma stayed put. "He said he wanted to talk with me. I don't want to talk at all. What's the use?"

"None at all." Carol sat, on the couch, at arm's length from Alma. From the neck down she was close to frowzy, with a rumpled shirt and old brown work pants, and socks but no shoes, but her face could still have been the face of a cowgirl in her twenties except for the wrinkles around the sharp brown eyes. The eyes focused on me. "I guess you haven't scared up any dust or you wouldn't be here."

"Right. You saw Harvey yesterday?"

She nodded. "For half an hour. That's all Morley Haight would allow. I've known that man- Someone ought to pin his ears back. Maybe me."

"I'll help. Anything from Harvey?"

"No. Nothing but more of the same."

I shook my head. "I want to ask you something. I told Lily today that she might ask Dawson if there's a good private detective in Helena. Product of Montana. People might tell him things they won't tell me. What do you think?"

"That's funny," she said.

"Funny how?"

"Two people have had the same idea. Flora and a friend of mine you don't know. I asked Harvey yesterday what he thought, and he said no. He said there wouldn't be any detective in Helena half as good as you, and anyway Dawson thinks he shot that man, and so would anybody he got. Everyone around here does, you know that."

"Not everyone. Not the man that shot him. Okay, skip it for now. You said you want to talk."

She looked at her daughter. "You're not my little heifer now, you've dropped a calf. I can't shoo you out." She stood up and said to me, "If you will please, we'll go outdoors."

Alma rose, thought she was going to say something but decided not to, headed for the door, and was gone. When she was out Carol went and shut the door, came back and sat at the end of the couch, closer to me, and said, "You could be right about her, but maybe not. She ought to know her father, but maybe she doesn't because he is her father. I can remember, I thought I knew mine when I was nineteen, but I didn't. I didn't find out until- To hell with it, that trail's grown over. What I wanted to tell you, I had an idea, but I'm not saying it's any good."

"Even a bad idea would be welcome."

"It's that couple at Bill Farnham's. Not the pair from Denver, that doctor and his wife from Seattle. Didn't I hear you say he's a doctor?"

I nodded. "Robert C. Amory, M.D., and his wife Beatrice."