Go Home, Stranger Page 6

  Then he went to see Vickie.

  She came into the little room with the detective and sat down across from him at the table as she had done before. There were shadows under her eyes, and he knew how desperately she was fighting for composure. Strain, he thought bitterly; nobody could stand it forever.

  “What’s new, Pete?” she asked, trying very hard to smile. She took a long puff on the cigarette he gave her.

  He leaned forward and spoke rapidly, keeping his voice down. “Conway. He gets, riper every time you look at him.” He told her about reading Mac’s reports, but omitted any mention of the murder attempt on Mrs. Conway. Vickie had enough on her mind without worrying about him.

  “You think he might be the one who—”

  “I don’t know,” he said grimly. “Not yet. But the whole deal is rotten, and I’m going to find out what it was. And the place to find out is Counsel Bayou. I’m going down there, but I’m not taking a brass band or wearing a sandwich board. I’ll keep in touch with you through Gage. So don’t let any of those damn reporters find out who I am or where I am, and don’t talk to anybody.”

  “It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” she said.

  He shook his head. “No. It’s just that I wouldn’t find out anything.”

  “No,” she said, her voice going thin and tight. “You can’t lie to me, Pete. And I can’t let you do it. He’s already killed M-Mac.” She had been holding her face together with an intense and concentrated effort, but now it all gave way at once and she broke. She put her head down on her arms and her body shook with crying.

  He waited helplessly until she had recovered. When she looked up at him at last with her eyes full of tears he patted her hand and said, “Don’t worry about me, Vick. I’ve hunted a lot in that kind of country, and I know the ground rules. You just hang on a little while longer, and we’ll have it made.”

  “Counselor,” the sign said, its twisted tubes of red and blue glass blank and unlighted in the sun. A glaring shell driveway led off the road to the left to swing up before the wide veranda of what had obviously been a residence at one time, a large house with the columned stateliness of another era. An expanse of lawn was now a parking area, completely empty at this time of the afternoon.

  Reno slowed, going past on the highway. This was where it was, he thought. He was pulled off here at the side of the road with the car and boat trailer, just looking at the place, when the girl went by and saw him. Maybe he was waiting for somebody, or maybe, if he really was Counsel, he was looking at the house he used to live in turned into a joint with two tons of neon out in front. He glanced around at the drowsy late-summer afternoon, the dark wall of moss-hung oaks on both sides of the highway beyond the inn, and the steel bridge up ahead shimmering in the sun, appraising the somnolent peacefulness of it. And, on the other hand, he reflected, maybe his name was just what he said it was and he was only running out on his wife like a thousand other men and I’ve got rocks in my head.

  Beneath the bridge the water was dark and still, some fifty yards across and overhung with trees. One of the arms of Counsel Bayou, he thought, trying to remember the map he had studied. It connected with the larger, dredged Bayou that was the ship channel, off to the left, and there should be another arm of it crossing the highway a mile or so ahead. Then he saw the other sign on the right, just beyond the bridge. “Gulfbreeze Camp,” it read. “Cabins. Boats. Live Bait.” The road swung off the highway into the oaks, and as he made the turn he caught glimpses of buildings and the sheen of sunlit-water somewhere beyond.

  One weathered building contained a lunchroom and a store with a gasoline pump out in front, and behind it, along the edge of the bayou, a row of cabins squatted dejectedly under the trees with their backs to the water. Weeds poked their way up through the ubiquitous shell paving in places and all the buildings needed a coat of paint. Dying on its feet, Reno thought, as he got out of the car.

  He went into the lunchroom. It was empty except for a blonde girl in a white apron sitting at one of the stools rasping her nails with an emery stick. She glanced languidly up at him as he came in, and got up to go around in back of the counter.

  “Yes, sir?” she asked, raising her eyebrows a little. They were plucked to a thin line, and the somewhat petulant small mouth was a crimson splash of lipstick.

  “Cup of coffee,” Reno said. As she was drawing it he noticed a large mounted bass over the door going out into the store at the other end of the counter. Good eight pounds, he thought.

  “They catch that around here?” he asked, nodding.

  She put the coffee down and glanced indifferently at the fish. “I reckon so.”

  “Nice bass.”

  She shrugged. “Is that what it is?”

  Fine front man for a fishing camp, Reno thought. But maybe bass just don’t do anything to her. “You got a vacant cabin?” he asked.

  “Sure. Lots of ’em.” She was studying her nails again.

  I can understand that, he thought. “I’d like to rent one, if it wouldn’t trouble you too much. How much are they?”

  “By the day or week?”

  “By the week.”

  She appeared to look at him for the first time. “Alone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Eighteen dollars, I think. You can talk to Skeeter. He’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Skeeter?”

  “Mr. Malone. He owns the place.”

  He wondered if Mac had talked to her. It was a girl living at this camp who saw the car and boat parked in front of the inn. And where was it he first began to get the hunch that Conway was Robert Counsel? It couldn’t have been from this girl, though, because she wouldn’t remember that much about Counsel. She wasn’t old enough. He had been gone from here for nine years, and she wasn’t over twenty-two or twenty-three. But somewhere down here Mac had found out a lot of things. Too many things, he thought.

  “Business a little slow?” he asked, stirring the coffee.

  “Lousy. Except on week ends,” the girl replied. A car pulled up in front and he could hear a man come into the store. “There’s Skeeter now, if you want to talk to him.”

  He paid for the coffee and went through the door into the other room. The shelves were filled with groceries, and a long showcase contained fishing tackle, mostly cheap stuff from the looks of it, the kind of things vacationers and tourists bought. The man was behind the opposite counter at the cash register.

  He glanced up at Reno with the briefest of nods, a thin, tough slat of a man dressed in khaki trousers and shirt, the sallow face and small black eyes as devoid of expression as a closed door. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “I’d like to get a cabin for a couple of weeks if the fishing’s any good,” Reno said. “How’re the bass hitting?”

  “They been taking some. Mostly with live bait, though. Water’s pretty warm.”

  “Well, I’ll give it a whirl.”

  He paid a week’s rent in advance, and Malone came outside with him, carrying the key. Getting into the car, he followed the lank figure around the corner of the building and along the row of cabins. It was the last one, directly behind the store building and next to the boat landing, where a half-dozen skiffs were tied up. Malone unlocked the door and they went in. It smelled musty, but the bare pine floor looked clean. It contained a bed and an old dresser with one of the drawers missing, and a door at the back opened into a small kitchen with a wood cookstove and an oilcloth-covered table. The door at the right of the room led into the bathroom, which had a, small window looking put toward the boat landing.

  “Hot water tank’s hooked to the cookstove,” Malone said. “If you don’t figure on doing any cooking, you can get hot water to shave with up at the kitchen.”

  “O.K.,” Reno said. They went out and stood for a moment on the small porch, squinting at the white sunlight. “Boats are extra, I suppose?”

  Malone nodded. “Two dollars a day. I’ll bring down a pair of oars.” He we
nt off toward the store and Reno began carrying in his duffel from the car. Malone came back in a minute and leaned the oars with their leather guards against the wall of the porch.

  “Take any boat you want,” he said, jerking his head toward the landing float.

  “Thanks.” Reno leaned against the door and lit a cigarette. “Lots of water back up in there, I guess.”

  Malone took out a plug of tobacco and whittled off a corner with his knife. “Never fished here before?”

  Reno shook his head. “I’m from out of state.” He jerked a hand toward the license plate of the car.

  “I wouldn’t go too far, then, without a guide. Them bayous wind all over hell, and a man could get lost if he didn’t know ’em.”

  “Why’s everything around here named Counsel?” Reno asked casually. “The roadhouse over there, and the bayou?”

  “Counsels used to own all of it. Rich family.” Malone spat out into the yard, the black eyes flashing at nothing.

  “But not any more?”

  “Don’t own any of it now. Ain’t but one of ’em left, anyway, and nobody knows where he is. In the pen, probably, now he ain’t got enough money to keep him out of it.”

  Not one of the old family friends, Reno reflected. If Conway was Counsel and he was coming back here it probably wasn’t to see Malone.

  After the other had gone he finished unpacking and took off the suit he had been wearing, slipping on khaki trousers and a T shirt and an old pair of Army shoes. Going out on the porch to escape the stifling heat inside the cabin, he squatted in the shade and opened the tackle box. He took the reel out of its cloth bag and began methodically to oil it, his mind busy with the same old rat race of thought.

  You figured out the answer to one question, and a dozen new ones sprung up to take its place. You could see now why Conway had brought his own boat, if he had to have one for some reason he alone knew. It figured if you added it up that way: Conway was Counsel, he’d grown up in this country and everybody would know him on sight, if he tried to rent one he’d be recognized, and presumably he didn’t want anybody to know he was here. But that still left the big one. Why had he needed a boat?

  And the new one, Reno thought. If everybody knew him, how was it possible he’d been here since the twentieth of July without anyone’s seeing and recognizing him? He considered it and knew there were a couple of good answers to that. Maybe he wasn’t here any more, and hadn’t been since that first night. And maybe he was dead.

  And in that case, who was doing all the shooting?

  Impatience took hold of him and he was no longer able to sit still. He slid the reel back in the tackle box and stood up. One thing. I can do right now, he thought, is to find that road where he turned off the highway. Setting the box back inside the cabin, he locked the door and was just going out to the car when he heard a boat. The sound was different from that of an outboard; and he looked curiously up the bayou.

  It shot into view around a wall of trees a hundred yards away, a two-seated runabout planing swiftly down the channel. Off the camp the man at the wheel swung hard over and came skidding in toward the landing, giving it full astern at the last moment. The boat settled as if pushed down in the water and eased up alongside the float. Reckless, Reno thought, but he can handle a boat. The man reached out a hand and steadied it while a girl stepped nimbly out, holding what looked like an old brief case under her arm.

  She turned, laughed, and said, “Thank you.”

  The man in the cockpit raised his white cap in a mock-courtly gesture that revealed flaming red hair, and pushed at the float with his hand. There was a deep-throated growl of power as the boat slid away from the landing and vanished around the turn in the channel. The whole thing hadn’t taken more than a minute.

  Reno stood beside the car watching the girl come up from the landing. She was a little over average height, wearing white slacks and a short-sleeved blouse, her short jet-black hair wind-blown from the ride. As she came nearer he observed that her eyes were dark brown, heavily lashed, and that the face was beautifully tanned. Memory stirred. There was no doubt of it. Her chin, though quite stubborn and firm, was undeniably dimpled. This was the girl Vickie had described.

  “Hello,” he said, as casually as he could.

  The girl met his inspection coolly, nodded a “Good afternoon,” which was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and went on past. She turned into the third cabin up the row.

  He had turned and started toward her cabin, but before he had taken a step he checked himself. Suppose it wasn’t really the same girl? Or suppose she was, but denied it? He’d have tipped his hand before he had been here twenty minutes. And there was something else. The papers had been full of the McHugh murder case for over ten days, and she had never come forward to back up Vickie’s story. Maybe he’d be a sucker to let her know who he was before he found out a little more about her.

  At least he’d found her. She would keep.

  Chapter Seven

  HE WAS STILL THINKING about her as he got in the car, and it wasn’t entirely about what she might know. A terrific-looking girl, he decided. And Vickie, with her professional ear, had called the shot when she’d said she had a good voice. The smooth contralto purr of that “Good afternoon” was like music. As he came around the store and started out to the highway he stopped on sudden impulse and went inside. Right here was a good place to get the lab report, he thought with sardonic humor.

  The blonde girl was reading a newspaper at the counter. She looked up as he came through the door.

  “Pack of cigarettes,” he said. She reached in the case and handed them over, and as he slipped the cellophane off he asked, “Who’s the Latin type?”

  She smiled sweetly as she handed him his change and a book of matches. “Pretty, isn’t she?”

  “If you like ’em like that, I guess. What’s she here for, the fishing?”

  “Why didn’t you ask her? As soon as you got your breath?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, I was just curious. Doesn’t matter. But she doesn’t look as if she’d care much for fishing.”

  “Well, not for bass, anyway.”

  Sharpen your Ratchet, kid, he thought. You can do better than that. He started to turn away indifferently. “Probably a schoolteacher on vacation.”

  The girl tucked a wisp of hair back of her ear. “She says she’s an artist.”

  “A painter, eh?”

  “I understand she likes muscles. She had Max Easter pose for her without his shirt.”

  “Easter? Who’s he? I mean, when he has his shirt on?”

  “A giant. Lives in a houseboat up the bayou. Some kind of a screwball.” She looked at Reno appraisingly. “Built about like you are. Maybe she’ll let you pose for her, too.”

  “Uh-uh. I’m just fat.” He lit a cigarette and threw the match toward the door. “What’s your name?”

  “Mildred. Mildred Talley. And I know you’re not interested in hers, but it’s Patricia Lasater. Or so she says.”

  “Mine’s Pete Reno.” He went toward the door. “I’ll see you at dinner, Mildred.” He stopped then, half through the doorway. “By the way, who’s the redhead with the speedboat?”

  “Hutch Griffin. He runs a boat service a couple miles down the channel. If you want to know any more about him, you could ask her.”

  He shook his head and waved, and went on out the door.

  He drove slowly down the highway, looking for the road turning off into the timber. According to Mac’s report, the girl—Patricia Lasater, probably, he thought—had passed Conway parked across from the Counselor. Then he had started his car and come along behind her for a short distance before he swung off into the trees. So it had to be somewhere very near here. He went a half mile, a mile. Another steel bridge loomed up ahead. The other arm of the bayou, he thought, remembering the map.

  He was almost past it before he saw it, a faint pair of ruts leading off-the highway into the oaks. He had to hit the brakes and back up a li
ttle to make the turn. You’d certainly have to know where that was in order to find it, he thought.

  It was quiet in the moss-hung dimness of the timber. The road, little more than a pair of ruts, dodged sharply around tree trunks and pushed through overhanging limbs that scraped along the top of the car. After about a quarter mile the underbrush thinned out a little and he could see the glint of sunlight on open water as he neared the edge of the bayou. He stopped and got out. It was fairly open here under the crowns of the big oaks and he could see the remains of two or three long dead campfires. Fishermen, he thought. There’s probably a piece of shelving bank along here somewhere where you can launch a boat off a trailer. Conway might have been headed here, all right. But for what? And if he launched his boat, what became of it? And the trailer? And, for that matter, Conway?

  An examination of the hard ground told him nothing. There had apparently been a few cars and campers in here since the last rain, but there was no way of knowing when that had been. And it had been a little over a month now since Conway had turned his car into this dead-end road, so the chances were very remote that any of these traces were his. He prowled moodily along the bank, having no idea of what he sought but drawn merely by the fact that this spot, this old camping place under the trees along a wild section of bayou, was the last place with which the mysterious Conway could be definitely linked before he had vanished.

  He stopped to light a cigarette, squatting on his heels and looking out over the bayou through an opening in the tree wall along the shore. He smoked the cigarette out to the end and dropped it into the water below him. A small fish came up and batted at it, and then another. Fingerling bass, he thought, ready to tackle anything, even at that age. Idly he ran his gaze along the edge of the water, looking for more. And then suddenly he stopped, his face still and his eyes staring at a spot some eight feet off to the left while the hair prickled along the back of his neck. It was impossible. It just couldn’t be.