A Purple Place for Dying

"What a stinking nuisance!" Mona Yeoman said.

The cooling car made tinkling sounds. A noisy bird laughed at us. A lizard sped through the broken rock.

"End of the line?"

"Goodness, no. We can walk it from here. It's a half mile, I guess. I haven't been up here in ever so long."

"How about my gear?"

"It didn't seem to me you had very much. I guess you might as well bring it along, Mr. McGee. Perhaps you might be able to roll enough of this rock over the edge so you can get the jeep by. Or I can send some men to do it.

"If we're going to keep this as quiet as possible, I better give it a try."

"That makes sense."

"If I decide to try to help you, Mrs. Yeoman."

She glanced at me. Her eyes were the beautiful blue of robins' eggs, and had just about as much expression. "You've come this far, haven't you? I think you will."

I lifted my suitcase out of the little car, and we climbed over the rock. It was a fresh slide. The broken edges of the rock showed that. I felt just as happy to be out of the car. The road was steep and the curves were very interesting. She had met me at noon at an airport fifty miles away, quite a distance from her home base. She said she had a place I could stay, a very hidden place, and we could do all our talking after we got there. Ever since meeting her I had been trying to figure her out.

She did not seem to fit either the rough country or the type of clothing she was wearing. She was a big ripe-bodied blonde of about thirty. She had a lot of control, and a competent way of handling herself, and a mild invulnerable arrogance. She would have looked far more at home on Park Avenue and Fifty-Something, in the highest of high style on a Sunday afternoon, wearing a fantastic hat and walking a curly little blue dog.

Here she strode up the gravel road in six-stitch boots, twill trousers, a tweed hacking coat, a sand-pale cowgirl hat. Though we were high, there was no wind and the sun made walking very hot work. I stopped and put my suitcase down and took my suit coat off.

"Good idea," she said, and shed hers and slung it over her shoulder. She went on, with the air that she was destined to walk ahead with most of the world following in single file. Her waist was narrow and she held her back very straight. The pale twill pants, a shade darker than her hat, were almost as tight as her skin. I read female character from sterns. Hers was hefty, shapely, rich and unapproachable. This one, I decided, would consider any gift of her favors a truly earth-shaking event, to be signaled by rare wine, incense and silk sheets. And she had the look of almost being able to live up to her own billing.

She was intent on one thing at a time. Walk now. Talk later.

The road ended at a cabin. It was on a half acre of naturally level ground, a rocky shelf three-quarters of the way up the mountain. The cabin was of silver-gray wood, twenty feet square, old, but honestly made, with a steep roof. There was an open shed beside it containing cords of wood and an ancient jeep still wearing its army paint. There was a shack behind it, against the rock face of the hill. There was a privy built out over one hell of a drop.

I followed her up onto the porch and she pried a key out of the pocket of those tight pants and unlocked the door.

"This is the bunk room and living room. That fireplace heats it beautifully. Kitchen through there. Wood stove. A good stock of staples. There's a spring up the hill. That's very rare around here. The water is piped into the kitchen. Cold water only. Excellent water though. I assume you saw the outside plumbing. The battery in the jeep is probably dead, but it should start if you run it downhill. You can take it to a gas station and see what it needs and put the amount on your bill. There are some rough clothes in that closet there. I doubt there's anything big enough to fit you, Mr. McGee, but I think you can make do."

"Mrs. Yeoman?"

"There are no sheets but plenty of blankets and… What?"

"I am not buying the place. I am not even renting it. Maybe I'm not even staying. So let's get to it, shall we?"

She looked at me with disapproval. "But somebody has to help me," she said. "Why did you come so far if…"

"Like a self-respecting call girl, Mrs. Yeoman, I reserve the right to pick and choose. Once upon a time a lady assumed I'd happily kill somebody for her. That isn't my line of work."

"This is nothing like that! Fran Weaver is one of my oldest friends. She said that if anybody in the world could…"

"I know. I know. She wrote me. I got in touch. You sent plane fare. You gambled your money, and I gambled my time. Now we see if we can get together." I put my suitcase on the bunk and opened it and took out the bottle carrier. "Bourbon with no ice?"

"Please. Some water, half and half. You'll find the water cold enough."

It ran rusty at first and cleared quickly, and it was cold enough to numb my fingers. I put drinks in two mismatched glasses and took them in. She sat on a leather cushion on the raised hearth. It was cooler inside. She had put her jacket around her shoulders and laid her hat aside.

I sat in a thong chair nearby,She lifted her glass and said, "To an agreement."

"Fine." We drank and I said, "I took this one blind because I'm almost broke, Mrs. Yeoman."

She looked concerned. "That… isn't very heartening."

"Like not being successful? I'm very successful."

"I don't understand."

"I work when the money gets low. Otherwise I enjoy my retirement, Mrs. Yeoman. I'm taking it in installments, while I'm young enough to enjoy it. I am commonly known as a beach bum. I live on a houseboat. I live as well as I want to live, but sometimes I have to go to work. Reluctantly. Do you understand the terms?"

"I… I think so. Fran said…"

"Something has to have been taken from you, something that belongs to you. You have exhausted all ways of getting it back. I'll make a try at it, if I go for the situation. If I can make a recovery, I keep half the value."

"It… it couldn't work that way in my case."

"Then let's walk back down that hill."

"No. Wait a minute. Let me tell you the situation. My father was Cubitt Fox. That doesn't mean anything to you, I know. But it is still a remembered name around here. I was his only child. My mother died two years after I was born. He tried to raise me like he would a son. He died twenty years ago, when I was twelve. He was forty-four. His dearest and closest friend was Jasper Yeoman. Jass was thirty-eight when daddy died. The will named Jass executor. He took over. He was very kind and generous. I went to good schools in the east, Mr. McGee. After I graduated from Vassar, I went to work in New York, on a magazine. I was on a generous allowance. I was twenty-two. I fell in love with a married man. We ran away together. It was a ghastly and horrible mistake. In Paris he had a change of heart and went scurrying back to his wife. I stayed there, for almost a year. I did too much drinking and I did some very foolish things. Then I got sick. Jass came over. He took me to Switzerland and stayed with me until I was well. I needed emotional stability and security and affection. Jass and I were married aboard ship on the way back, nine years ago. He's fifty-eight now. Up until a year ago, it was… a comfortable life. Jass is a rich and successful and tough minded man. It was a first marriage for him. We've been unable to have children, and it's my fault, not his. A year ago I fell in love again. I thought Jass would be… reasonable. He hasn't been. I decided I would leave him. I thought I would get the money my father left me and leave him. I was still getting the allowance which I thought was the interest from the estate held in trust for me. I know there were several trust funds. I had been receiving fifteen hundred dollars a month since I was twenty-one. And spending it. I've been a little too damned good at spending it. Jass was the executor, as I told you. I asked for an accounting. He laughed at me. He said that my father's estate had been used up years ago, and that he had been continuing my allowance out of his own pocket. I demanded to see the figures. He said that they wouldn't mean anything to me if I saw them. He said daddy had made foolish investments, and the estate money had run out at the time we were married.

"Mr. McGee, my father was successful! At the time he died the papers said that his estate, before taxes, was worth over two million dollars. It couldn't be gone. I think my husband has… taken all that money somehow."

"Mrs. Yeoman, I think you need a lawyer and an accountant. I don't think you need me."

"Let me tell you a few facts of life. This is Esmerelda County. Eight miles down the valley is the City of Esmerelda. In the city is the Esmerelda Bank and Trust Company. My husband is the county and the city and the bank, and he is a lot of other things. Jass goes on hunting trips with the other men who run this whole state. He plays poker with them. Damn it, I am being treated like a child bride, as if this was some sort of little temper tantrum. I'm supposed to be a good girl and get over it."

"But did you see a lawyer?"

"I couldn't find a lawyer in Esmerelda who wanted to touch it. I found a young lawyer in Belasco, over in the next county. He poked around for a month. I can't remember all he said, but I think I can remember the important parts. My husband had to give an account of his… his stewardship to the probate judge, and file reports with the court, because I was a minor, I guess. He made three reports, five years after daddy died, and ten years after, and fifteen years after. The last was a final report, five years ago, claiming the estate was exhausted. The judge is dead. Four years ago they built the new courthouse. The records are in the dead files and they aren't even indexed, and there's no way of telling if the records are there or not. The lawyer Jass used is dead, and nobody knows where his files and records went to. My lawyer said he would have to start from the other end, to get a copy of the tax statement filed with the federal government twenty years ago, and identify the assets, and then trace them through the public records of sales and so forth, and build up a case that some kind of funny business had gone on. Then I would have to bring action against my husband. Even if we got something to go on, he said Jass could stall for three or four years before we could ever get it into court. In the meantime, my allowance has been cut off until I, quote, come to my senses, unquote. He pats me on the head and tells me to forget all this nonsense."

"Maybe the estate wasn't as big as you thought it was, Mrs. Yeoman."

"Oh, come now! Daddy loved land. He had faith in the future of this area. I showed the lawyer, and I can show you, just one of the pieces he owned. Now it's got the Chem-Del plant on it, and two big shopping centers and about four hundred tract houses. He checked it out in the County Clerk's office, and it wasn't sold to pay estate taxes. The records show it was sold three years after he died to something called the Apex Development Corporation. The records in the state capital show that Apex lasted four years and collapsed, with no asset values. Daddy owned this area right here, too. Ten thousand acres. Jass knew I loved this place. He gave me a deed to this part of it, nine hundred acres, for my birthday about seven years ago. He said he bought it back from the people who owned it. Four months ago I looked into the idea of selling it, but Jass is on the deed too, and I can't."

"What do you think you want from me?"

"The estate was stolen from me, by my husband. There must be some way of… of making him make restitution. Some way of making him take me seriously. Because I am serious, damn it. I want my money, and I want a divorce, and I want to marry John Webb."

"The money is necessary. I assume."

"John hasn't any, if that's what you mean. He's an assistant professor at State Western. The legislature controls the University. Jass has good friends in the legislature. The day I leave him, according to Jass, John Webb gets booted out with damn small chance of getting a job elsewhere. I've been reduced to… to being a captive, Mr. McGee."

"A smart woman can make a man feel happy to be rid of her."

"I have been an absolute bitch for months. He laughs at me. He says I'll get over it. He's always been… very ardent. I haven't let him touch me. That doesn't seem to bother him either. I think he has somebody else. He is so terribly confident I'll get over this little tantrum, and be his girl bride again. I had to sell jewelry to pay that lawyer, and I had to sell jewelry to pay for your plane ticket. He says once I prove to him that I want to be a wife again, we can go back to the way things used to be. I told my troubles to Fran when she visited me. And you were the only thing she could suggest."

"I don't see how there's anything which can be done."

"Mr. McGee, I want to be realistic about this. I've scaled my wants way way down. I want him convinced he should let me go, and I want to walk away with fifty thousand dollars. If you can pry me loose somehow, with a hundred thousand, I'll give you half. If you can manage more, I'll give you ten percent of everything over a hundred thousand. My only other choice is to sit around and wait for him to die. And he is a very healthy man."