A Touch of Death (6 page)

I slowed, watching for the wire gate on the left side of the road. We came to it in a few minutes, went through, and I closed it again. It was eight miles of rough private road now, up over a series of sand hills and then dropping down toward the lake. The last time I’d been in they were cutting timber back in here somewhere and logging trucks were using the first three or four miles of the road. I could see the tread marks of their big tires in the ruts now. There was no way to tell whether any other cars had been in or not.

I pushed it hard. In about ten minutes we came to the fork where the logging trucks swung off to the right. I went left. As soon as we were around the next bend I stopped and got out and looked at the ruts in the headlights. There hadn’t been a car through since the last time it had rained, probably weeks ago. We had it all to ourselves.

Dawn was breaking as we came down the last grade. I caught glimpses of the arm of the lake ahead, dark and oily smooth, like blued steel, with patches of mist rising here and there in the timber. It was intensely quiet, and beautiful. For a minute I wished I were only going fishing. Then I brushed it off.

We went through the meadow and crossed a wooden culvert at the edge of the trees along the lake shore. I stopped and got out. The key was hanging on a nail just inside one end of the culvert.

The cabin faced the meadow rather than the lake. It was large for a fishing or duck-hunting camp, more like a deserted old farmhouse backed up among the big trees at the lake’s edge. It was still half dark back in here, and I left the lights on as I stopped by the overhang of the front porch.

The lock grated in the early-morning hush. I pushed the door open and went in. Striking a match, I located one of the kerosene lamps and lit it. This was the main room, with a wood-burning kitchen stove and some cupboards in the rear and a cot and some chairs and a table up front. The door on the right led into a storeroom that was cluttered with a hundred or so old beat-up duck decoys, parts of outboard motors, some oars, and a welter of fishing tackle.

The other one, on the left, was closed. I pushed it open and carried the lamp in. It was the bedroom. It held two built-in bunks, one above the other, and a double bed against the front wall. The bed was spread with an Army blanket. I put the lamp down on a small table and went back out to the car.

I carried her in and put her on the bed. Her face was waxen white in the lamplight and her hair was a dark mist across the pillow. She must have been at least thirty, she was a passed-out drunk, but she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I stood looking down at her for a minute. The whole thing was a lousy mess. Then I shrugged and picked up the lamp. I wasn’t her mother. And it was a rough world, any way you looked at it.

I built a fire in the cookstove and went up to the spring for a couple of buckets of water. It was full light now, and lovely, with bluish-gray smoke curling out of the stovepipe above the old shake roof and going off into the sky through the trees. I moved the car into the old shed on the far side of the house and closed the doors. Then I took an inventory of the food supply. Bill always kept the kitchen well stocked. There were a couple of boxes of canned stuff in the storeroom and some flour and miscellaneous staples in the cupboards. I opened a fresh can of coffee and put on the coffeepot.

I sat down and smoked a cigarette, listening to the crackle of the fire and realizing I felt tired after being on the run all night. Drawing a hand across my face, I felt the rasp of beard stubble, and went over to the mirror hanging on the rear wall. I looked like a thug. My eyebrows and hair are blond, but when the beard comes out it’s ginger-colored and dirty.

I rooted around in the storeroom until I found somebody’s duffel bag with a toilet kit in it. It held a safety razor and some blades, but no shaving soap. I used hand soap to lather up, and shaved. Then I put the shirt and tie back on. It was a little better.

The coffee had started to boil. It smelled good. I poured a cup and sat down to smoke another cigarette. The sun was coming up now. I thought of all that had happened since this time yesterday morning. Everything had changed.

I no longer worried about the fact that I was breaking laws as fast as they could set them up in the gallery. My only concern was that what I was doing was dangerous as hell and if I was caught I was ruined. But it was not even that which caused the chill goose flesh across my shoulders.

It was the thought of that money, more money than I could earn in a lifetime. It lay somewhere just beyond the reach of my fingers, and I could feel the fingers itching as they stretched out toward it. Mrs. Butler knew where it was.

And I had Mrs. Butler.

It was nearly two hours before I heard her move on the bed in the other room. She was coming around.

I’d better be good now. I had to be good to make this stick. I picked up the bottle of whisky and a glass, and went in.

She was sitting up on the bed with her hands on each side of her face, the fingers running up into her hair. It was the first time I had ever seen her eyes, and I could see what Diana James had meant when she said they were big and smoky-looking.

She stared at me.

“Good morning,” I said. I poured a drink into the glass.

“Who are you?” she demanded. She looked around the

room. “And what am I doing in this place?”

“Better take a little of this,” I said. “Or if you’d rather have it, we’ve got black coffee.” I knew damn well which she’d rather have, but I threw in the coffee just to keep talking.

She took the drink. I corked the bottle and went out into the other room with it. When I came back I had a basin of cold water, a washcloth and towel, and her purse. I set them on the table and shoved the table over where she could reach it. She ignored the whole thing.

“Will you answer my question?” she said. “What am I doing in this revolting shanty?”

“Oh,” I said. “Then you don’t remember?”

“Certainly not. And I never saw you before.”

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” I said. “Right now I just want you to feel better.”

I squeezed out the cloth and handed it to her. She scrubbed at her face with it and I gave her the towel. Then I dug her comb out of the jumble of stuff in her purse. I watched her comb her hair. It wasn’t quite black

in daylight. It was rich, dark brown.

“How about some coffee?” I said.

She stood up and brushed at the blue robe. I nodded

toward the door and followed her into the other room.

She sat down in the chair I pulled out for her. I poured some coffee and then gave her a cigarette and lit it. Then I sat down across from her, straddling a chair with my arms across the back.

She ignored the coffee. “Perhaps you can explain this,” she said.

I frowned. “Don’t you remember anything at all?”

“No.”

“I was hoping you would,” I said. “Especially what happened before I got there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “And will you, for the love of the merciful God, tell me who you are?”

“Barton,” I said. “John Barton, of Globe Surety. Remember? I’m from the Kansas City office, but they put me on it because I used to work oult of Sanport and know this country.”

I had to keep snowing her. She was rum-dum, but she still might be sharp enough to want to see something that said Barton, of Globe Surety Company. The thing was to give her the impression I’d already shown her my credentials but that she’d been drunk when she’d seen them. We wouldn’t mention that. It would be embarrassing.

But she didn’t go for the fake hand-off. She came right in and smeared me. “I’ve never heard of a company by that name,” she said. “And I never saw you before in my life. How do I know who you are?”

It was the longest, coldest bluff I had ever pulled in my life, and if I didn’t make it stick I was penitentiary bait. I felt empty all the way down to my legs.

“Oh, sure,” I said. I reached back for the wallet in my hip pocket and started flipping through the leaves of identification stuff. I made a show of finding the one I wanted, and just as I started to pass her the whole thing, I said, “Can you remember anything at all about what he looked like? Even his general build would help.”

She took her eyes off the wallet and looked at me. “Who looked like?” she asked blankly.

“The man you said tried to kill you. Just before I got there.”

That did it.

She gasped. And just for an instant I saw fear in her eyes. Then it was gone. “Tried to kill me?”

“Yes,” I said, still crowding her. “I realize it was dark, of course. But did he say anything when he lunged at you? I mean, would you recognize his voice?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I was just up in my room—”

“That’s right,” I interrupted. I put the wallet back in my pocket while I went on talking. “You were playing the phonograph, you said. And when I found you out there on the lawn you had a record in your hand. I don’t think you even knew you were carrying it, but I couldn’t get it away from you. You had a death grip on it. At first I couldn’t make any sense at all out of what you were trying to say.”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember any of it,” she said. “Maybe you’d better tell me what happened.”

“Sure.” I lit a cigarette for myself. “I had to talk to you. We’re trying to run down a lead our Sanport office dug up—but I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, I got into Mount Temple last night after midnight, and when I’d checked into the hotel I tried to call you. The line was busy. I tried again later, and it was the same thing, so I got a cab and went out to your house.

“And just as I was coming up the drive in the cab I saw you in the headlights. You had run out the front door and were going around toward the garage. When I got over to where you were, you had fallen on the lawn. You had this phonograph record in one hand and your purse in the other. You were in a panic, and practically hysterical. I couldn’t make out what you were trying to say at first. It was something about listening to the music in your room by candlelight, and that you had looked around over your shoulder and there was a man standing behind you. I tried to calm you down and get the story straightened out, but you just kept saying the same thing over and over—that the man had lunged at you with something in his hand.

“You didn’t seem to know how you’d got away from him, but when I suggested we go inside you started to go to pieces. Nothing could make you go back inside the house. All you wanted to do was get in the car and get away. I was afraid we’d wake the neighbors, so I went along with it. I drove, and tried to figure out what to do. I couldn’t take you to the hotel or a tourist court there in town, of course, because you’d be known everywhere. You went to sleep, and I finally thought of this place. It’s a duck club I belonged to when I was in Sanport and I knew there wouldn’t, be anybody out here this time of year. Maybe you could get some rest, and we could talk it over when you woke up. That’s about it.

“I wish you could remember something about that man, though. If he was trying to kill you, he may get you next time.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Her eyes were thoughtful.

“Do you have any idea who he could have been?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Do you really think I saw anybody?”

“Yes,” I said. Baby, I thought, if you only knew. “Yes. I think you did. You were under a terrible strain.”

“I must have been.” She stared moodily down at her hands. When she looked back up at me she said, “You said you came to talk to me. What about?”

“Your husband.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “I suppose you want to ask some more questions. Or the same ones over again. I’ve told it so many times...”

“Yes,” I said. I felt good. I’d put it over. “It’s been rough on you, and we hate to be the pests we are, but we’ve got a job to do. However, mine isn’t quite the same

as the police’s. They’re looking for your husband.”

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

I studied the end of the cigarette. “Only incidentally.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll be frank with you, Mrs. Butler. My orders, first and last, are to find that money. Any way I can. We have to pick up the tab for it if it’s not recovered, so you can see where our interest is.”

“I wish I could help you. You can see that, can’t you? But there isn’t anything I can tell you that hasn’t already been told.”

I waited, not saying anything.

She sighed again. “All right. He came home from the bank at noon that Saturday, said he was going to some lake in Louisiana, fishing, and that he’d be home Sunday night. I didn’t see any money, or anything that could have held that much money, but maybe it was in the car, if he had it. He didn’t take any clothes except fishing clothes, as far as I could tell afterward. I know he didn’t take a bag. Just the fishing tackle. I was a little worried when he didn’t return Sunday night, but I thought perhaps he had merely decided to stay over another day. And then, Monday morning, Mr. Matthews, the president of the bank, came out and told me—” She quit talking and just stared down at her hands.

“You don’t have any idea why he would do a thing like that?” I asked.

The hesitation was hardly noticeable. “No,” she said.

I frowned at the cigarette in my hand, and then looked squarely at her. “Well, I’m afraid we do now,” I said. “It’s unpleasant, and I wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was running off with another woman.”

“No!”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler. But that’s the lead I mentioned, the thing our Sanport office found out. The girl’s name is Diana James, or at least that’s what she calls herself. She had an apartment in Sanport, and that’s where he was headed. She was going to hide him there.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Unfortunately, it’s true.”

“Then,” she said, “under the circumstances, don’t you think you’re just wasting your time talking to me? Apparently this James person is the only one who really knows anything about my husband.”