Talk of the town Page 13

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  I think it would be absolutely wonderful,” she said quietly. “But are you sure you want to do it?”

  “Yes. The more I look at it, the more it appeals to me. Then it’s a deal?”

  She nodded. Then all at once she smiled warmly and held out her hand.

  “I’ll start the transfer of the money to an account here in the local bank,” I said. “It’ll take several days. In the meantime you can get your lawyer to draw up the partnership agreement.”

  “All right,” she said. Then she shook her head wearily. “But, Bill, how can we even reopen the place? We don’t know what they’ll do next.”

  I took hold of her arms. “I’m still working on it. There are a couple of small leads and I’m trying to get hold of Redfield now.”

  “Do you think he’ll ever do anything?”

  “He has to,” I said. “We’ve just got to keep trying.”

  When she went back to the office I stripped off the sweaty clothes, showered, and changed the dressing on my arm. I put on a fresh sports shirt and some new trousers and made up a bundle of laundry to drop off in town. It was a quarter to twelve when I got out to Redfield’s again, and this time I had better luck. Just as I was stopping I caught a glimpse of him along the right side of the house. He was working in the backyard. I started rather hesitantly along the brick walk, but when he saw me coming and made no move to head me off I gathered it was all right. She had gone inside.

  He was shirtless, kneeling as he worked at the low brick wall. Beside him, in the shade of the large oak, was the steel wheelbarrow containing a small heap of mortar. He glanced up.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He nodded curtly, but made no reply. I wondered if he thought I’d come to start trouble. He’d roughed me up in the office when he lost his temper, I outweighed him by at least thirty pounds, and he was a long way from his gun. But if the thought had even occurred to him it obviously wasn’t worrying him.

  I lit a cigarette and squatted then on my heels, watching him. He was a good cop, but he’d never give Churchill any competition as an amateur bricklayer. “Something I wanted to tell you,” I said. “I went back out there this morning. And I found the place he parked his car.”

  He didn’t even look up. I don’t bring the job home with me.”

  He was awkward with the trowel, and kept poking and patting more mortar between the bricks with his fingers. “You’re not going to have any fingertips left,” I said. “That stuff’s abrasive.”

  “I know,” he replied. “After half an hour of it they feel like they’d been sandpapered.”

  “You mind if I show you something?” I asked.

  “You a bricklayer?”

  “Not union. But I used to do a lot of this patio stuff. Walks, borders, things like that.”

  He said nothing, and for a moment I thought he was going to refuse. Then he handed me the trowel and moved back a little. I showed him how to slap down the mortar, spread it with the tip of the trowel to push it towards the edge of the bricks, and how to butter the end of the new one with mortar with a wiping motion of the trowel. I put it in place, sliced off the excess with the trowel, and went on to the next one. I put down three more.

  He gave me a fleeting, hard grin. “You sure as hell make it look easy.”

  “It just takes practice,” I said. “But you ought to wet your bricks down more. They’re too dry.”

  “What does that do?” he asked.

  “They’re porous, so they absorb all the moisture from your mortar too fast. Makes it crumbly, and it won’t bind. You got a tub or something to soak them in?”

  “Sure.” He went across to the garage and came back with a small garbage can. “How’s this?”

  “Fine,” I said. We filled it with bricks and turned the hose on it. “Let them soak a few minutes and then take them out.”

  He nodded, and wiped the perspiration from his face. “How about a beer?”

  “Sounds great,” I said.

  He went through the screened back porch and into the kitchen, and emerged in a minute with two punched cans of beer. We squatted on our heels in the shade. I glanced around the rest of the patio. The other wing of the house stretched across behind us to the drive and I could see the front wheels and hood of an old car beyond the corner of it. There was a picture window in the central part, with flower-beds under it, and brick paving across the inner part of the L. That was where she had been. I tried not to think about her at all and hoped she didn’t come out.

  I nodded towards the mass of bougainvillea on the garage. “Don’t you have frost here? How do you protect that?”

  He took a sip of his beer. “We only have two or three a year that’re sharp enough to hurt it. I put a smudge pot back in the corner and that saves it.”

  We discussed the local lawn grasses. He was full of the subject, and some of the hardness went out of his eyes as he warmed to it. He looked at me with interest. “You sound like a gardener yourself. How’d you happen to know so much about all this?”

  I had an uncle who was a landscape architect,” I said. “I used to work for him.” I told him about the deal with Georgia Langston, and what I wanted to do with the grounds.

  He nodded. “So that’s the deal?” He turned the beer can in his hands, staring at the lettering on it. Then he said, curtly and ill-at-ease, “I’m sorry about that business in the office.”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  He reached into the pocket of his trousers and brought out a packet of cigarettes and held them out. “Smoke?”

  They were Kents. “Thanks,” I said. I took one and we both lit up.

  We finished the beer and he rose. “Got to unload the rest of those bricks,” he said. “I’ll back in.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” I told him. I felt good about having been right about him all the time. He went on round the corner of the opposite wing of the house and I heard the car door slam. It pulled ahead in the drive, and as it came all the way into view I stared. It was a pick-up truck. He cut the wheels and backed in across the brick paving and stopped. I shot a quick glance at the rear wheels. The treads were that same diamond pattern I’d seen out there in the dust.

  I kept my face expressionless. It didn’t mean anything, I thought. Plenty of people smoked that brand of cigarettes, there were hundreds of pick-up trucks around, and that was one of the most common of all truck tires. But he was out of the office when I’d got there.

  We unloaded the bricks and stacked them. He leaned against the tailgate and looked at me thoughtfully. “You say you went out there this morning? And found the place he parked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know what he was driving?”

  I wasn’t too sure what he was after, but there was no use ducking it. “Yes,” I said. “A pick-up truck.”

  He nodded approvingly. I was wondering if you spotted that gouged place on the sapling.”

  It was a relief, somehow. The other man, the unknown, was dangerous enough, but Redfield would have been worse. “So you went out, too?” I asked.

  “After Mitchell came back and told me it probably happened about the way you said. I had a hunch how he’d got in there, so I took the back road and then walked down to where he’d turned around at that fallen tree.”

  “Did you go on down to the barn?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He gave me that hard-bitten grin. “If you mean the cigarette butt, I left that. You don’t think he’d be stupid enough to do it?”

  “No,” I said. “I guess not, come to think of it.”

  At that moment a car came down the drive and stopped in front of the garage, and I realized I had stayed too long. It was a station wagon, and the girl who got out could have been any attractive young suburban housewife meeting the six-fifteen. except that I had to fight myself to keep from seeing her the way I had the first time. I kept my face blankly polite—I hoped.

  She wore the dark red h
air in a shoulder-length pony tail, and had on sandals and a crisp cotton dress with a very conservative heart-shaped face. She was prettier than most. And probably more extensively tanned—I cursed myself.

  Redfield introduced us rather stiffly. She held out her hand, and smiled. “How do you do, Mr. Chatham.”

  “How do you do,” I said.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” she asked pleasantly.

  I shook my head. “San Francisco.”

  She regarded me thoughtfully. “It’s odd, though. I have the strangest impression I’ve seen you somewhere before.

  I caught my party expression before it could slide off onto my shirt, and propped it up again. “Well—that is, I have been around here for a day or two.”

  “Maybe that’s it.” Then she smiled charmingly. “You’ve had that feeling, haven’t you, Mr. Chatham. I mean, that you’ve seen someone before?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. I suppose everybody does at times.”

  I was furious, and uneasy at the same time because I couldn’t see what she was up to. So she hadn’t been asleep. Then she knew it was purely accidental and that I’d fled the moment I saw her.

  “How do you like our garden?” she asked. “Don’t you think Kelly’s done a wonderful job?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s very good.”

  Maybe she was crazy. It was another minute or two before I could get away with any grace at all. Redfield said nothing, except to thank me curtly for helping him with the bricks.

  “You must come back, Mr. Chatham,” she said graciously.

  “Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I went out to the station wagon, wondering if I was leaving blood tracks on the driveway. What was the matter with her, and what had she been trying to do? Why the knife? Or had it been that at all? Maybe she was just bouncing her nude body against me for kicks. Or as an invitation.

  In the presence of her husband? Redfield? If she liked to live that dangerously, why not take up Russian roulette with all the chambers loaded?

  When I got back to the motel, Georgia Langston was behind the desk in the lobby, making entries in two big ledgers. Josie was muttering indignantly. “I jest can’t do nothin’ with her, Mr. Chatham.”

  “I can,” I said. I closed the ledgers, took her by the arm, and walked her into the bedroom. Stacking the two pillows, I told her firmly, “In you go.”

  She sighed with exaggerated martyrdom, but lay back. I removed her sandals, dropped them by the bed, and sat down in the armchair. She turned her head then, and smiled. “You’re a bully. But nice.”

  “I happen to think you’re pretty nice too,” I said. “And I don’t like picking up the pieces of people I’m fond of, so you stay there. I want to talk to you, anyway.”

  She made a face. “Well, do you think I could smoke, Doctor?”

  I lit a cigarette for her and one for myself. “How well did you and your husband know the Redfields?” I asked.

  “Not really well,” she replied. “We rarely entertained at all. You just can’t, and operate a motel. I think we played bridge together two or three times. But he and my husband went fishing together quite often.”

  “That’s something else I wanted to ask you about,” I said. “Weren’t you worried about his going fishing alone? I mean, with a history of two heart attacks?”

  She nodded. “Of course. But he practically never did, because of the way I felt about it. The only reason he went alone that day was that Redfield had to go out of town at the last minute and he couldn’t get anybody else—”

  “Hold it,” I said quickly. “Back up a minute. You mean he and Redfield had planned to go together, but Redfield had to cancel? Tell me exactly how it happened.”

  She stared at me questioningly. “The day it all happened was Thursday, you know. They’d had the trip planned since the previous Monday, or something like that. But around noon on Wednesday Redfield called here. He was leaving town right then, going up into Alabama somewhere, I think, to extradite a prisoner, or some other police job. He said he was sorry he hadn’t called sooner.”

  “He talked to you?” I asked. “Not your husband?”

  “Yes. Kendall was out somewhere.”

  “And you gave him the message? You’re sure of it?”

  “Of course. But why are you asking me all this?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know,” I said. “But there’s something about it that keeps needling me. You say Redfield apologized because he hadn’t called sooner? Did he say it was because he hadn’t known about it sooner, or he’d just forgotten to?”

  She thought about it “Wait. I remember now. I’m pretty sure he said it had just slipped his mind.”

  I nodded. “Well, wait a minute. You say Redfield questioned you, along with the Sheriff. The next day, I mean. Was his trip called off, or something, or had he gone and come back?”

  “Let’s see,” she said. “They took me into the Sheriff’s office about nine-thirty that morning, I think. Redfield wasn’t there then, I know. He came in around noon, or one o’clock.”

  So he had gone out of town, apparently. And he’d known about it prior to noon the day before, possibly early that morning. I began to feel excited. Then it went flat. What possible connection could it have had with Langston, even assuming my wild guess was right?

  “Do you know anything about Mrs. Redfield at all?” I asked. “Where she comes from originally and how long they’ve been married and so on?”

  “No-o. I don’t know much. As I say, I only met her a few times. But she seemed very nice. She was a school teacher, and I think they’ve been married a little over two years.”

  “Is she a native?”

  “I think she came here from Warren Springs. That’s about sixty miles. But she does have relatives here; you’d never believe it if you’ve met her, an attractive girl like that, but she’s a cousin of that horrible Pearl Talley—”

  “Talley?” I said sharply.

  “Umh-umh.” She smiled. I gather, from the way you said it, that you’ve met him?”

  Twice,” I said. I told her about it.

  “That’s Talley, all right. The lipstick thing is typical. A lot of people think he’s amusing—you know, a character—but to me he’s revolting. Those depraved girls he lives with—And it isn’t as if he were stupid and didn’t know any better. He’s very intelligent, and probably the shrewdest business man in the County. He owns a half-interest in the movie theatre, and a junk yard, and I don’t know how much real estate.”

  I know,” I said. “Or at least, I’ve heard about his farms. But what else do you know about Mrs. Redfield?”

  “Well, I gather you’ve met her too,” she said coolly. “She is about the most attractive girl in town, isn’t she?”

  “Let’s say the second most attractive,” I interrupted. “But here’s what I’m driving at. Everybody agrees Strader came up here to see some woman. And from what I’ve heard of him, the chances are it wasn’t Gravel Gertie.”

  She stared. “You couldn’t mean her?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know—but she just doesn’t seem the type. And they’ve been married only two—”

  “Let’s take another look at the record,” I said. “You don’t exactly seem the type yourself. And you’d been married only one year. But that didn’t seem to bother anybody when it came to hanging Strader around your neck. So why can’t we try him on Mrs. Redfield, just for size?”

  “But what do you have to go on?”

  “Mostly coincidences and wild guesses, so far. He always stayed here, and she lives about a quarter of a mile behind the place. We know Redfield was out one night, at least—”

  She looked worried. “Bill, do you have any idea how long you’d stay alive if you ever said that aloud in this town?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid so.”

  It could have been Redfield in that loft. His saying he’d been out there later didn’t mean a thing
. I’d already told him I’d gone out there, he knew I was a trained cop and would have seen those things, so he had to explain them some way. What could be subtler and more convincing than that buddy-buddy mutual-admiration pitch that we were both pretty good.

  Mrs. Redfield appeared to be in an absolutely impregnable position.

  11

  Then it began to fall apart.

  “Wait,” I said. “We could be a mile off the beam. We both have some idea of the kind of man Redfield is. So why are we taking it for granted he’d shield her if he knew she’d cheated with Strader? He’d be more likely to kill her.”

  “Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “If he knew.”

  I nodded. “There. You’ve got it. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to. That fits all the way round and explains everything he’s done. So far, he doesn’t have any more doubt than he can bury and try to ignore, and as far as he’s concerned it’s going to stay that way. Maybe it’s very little. Say those other two dates that Strader was up here—”

  “The sixth and the twenty-ninth of October.”

  They came out, of course, when they were questioning you,” I went on. “So suppose Redfield checked back and found he’d also been out of town overnight on both the sixth and twenty-ninth of October?”

  She thought about it. “That’s still rather flimsy evidence to cause a man to suspect his wife.”

  “Sure,” I said. “So he must have more. But not too much more. He’s an intelligent man and a very hard one, so there’s a definite limit to the amount of self-delusion he can come up with, or live with, no matter how desperately he’s in love with her—or infatuated with her, if you want to put it that way.”

  “But what are you going to do?” she asked apprehensively.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said.

  It was deadly any way you looked at it. Redfield was a police officer, and a highly respected one. He had sources of information everywhere. I was already marked because of my connection with Georgia Langston. Anything I did or any questions I asked would get back to him within an hour. Even if she were completely innocent, he could kill me with no more penalty than a routine hearing. This was the South, and the small-town South at that; you didn’t go around publicly inquiring into the morals of another man’s wife unless you were already tired of living.