Come Back Dead (17 page)

“This house once belonged to the Palliser family, didn't it?”

My local knowledge impressed O'Connor. “There's a name you never hear anymore. Yep, the Pallisers built this house.”

“Were there any owners between the Pallisers and you?”

“Nope.” I could see his eyes now. They were congratulating me. “I bought it from old man Palliser's estate.”

O'Connor threw the tarp back over the float, hitting the light and sending it swinging again.

“Why do you keep that thing?”

He chuckled again. “You should know why, after what you went through the other night. This float doesn't belong to me. Not my property at all. If the rightful owners should show up looking for it, I sure don't want to disappoint them.”

26

A sentry was on duty in front of the pylons that flanked the Traynor House drive. His navy blue uniform didn't belong to a sheriff's deputy or a state trooper, so I figured him for a private guard. He was leaning against a navy blue sedan, reading a newspaper. Reading about Hank Shepard, ten to one.

I slowed the wagon and tried to think of a story that would win me an audience with Marvella Traynor. I was too sleepy to work one out, but it didn't matter. The guard hardly glanced at me before waving me through the pylons. As I passed his sedan, I spotted a logo on its front door: the Traynor Company's winged T. My wagon had the same decoration, which had led to the guard's mistake and, probably, to his eventual firing. Well, things were tough all over.

The mansion's front door was answered by a familiar face: Greta, the rustling maid from the Traynors' dinner party. Like Whitehead at the courthouse, Greta seemed to have forgotten me.

“I'm working my way through college selling magazine subscriptions,” I said to fill the rustling void. “Is the lady of the house in?”

“Mrs. Traynor is indisposed.”

“There's one disease poor people were spared,” I said, but the sociology was wasted on Greta. “Please tell her that Scott Elliott is here. I have a question to ask her regarding her late uncle's hobbies. Please add that I'm up to my knees in newspaper reporters.”

Greta checked my knees, nodded, and shut the door. She shot home the bolt for luck.

The bolt was withdrawn again before I'd finished a Lucky. Greta led me back to the oval dining room where Drury had laid an egg on our first night in Indiana. There were French doors on one end of the oval. Greta opened one for me and sent me out into the world on my own.

The doors led to a stone terrace. It was also oval shaped, but one end was squared off by the side of the house. The rounded end was edged with a low stone railing. Small statues were spaced out along the railing's cap. I studied the statue behind Marvella Traynor as I walked toward her across the hot flags. It was a female dancer, dressed in a toga and frozen in an awkward pirouette. I glanced at the other statues to confirm that they were all dancers, each caught in a different pose. Beyond their static chorus line was a backdrop of hazy blue sky.

Marvella was reclining on a chaise lounge on the leftmost edge of the terrace. To the left of her chair were stairs that descended to a formal garden. Beyond and below the garden, the White River wound its way toward Traynorville. Marvella sat with her back to the scenery in the shade of a big striped umbrella that rose from the center of a glass-topped table. Tea for one had been set on the table near Marvella's elbow. She didn't have to worry about the tea getting cold on her today, I thought.

Her attire was as out of step with the heat as her choice of drink. She was wearing a long housecoat in a Chinese print of red and black with a high collar and a skirt that fanned out across the bottom of the lounge chair. Her head was supported by pillows, and she held a black handkerchief to one temple. From something–the handkerchief or the woman or the garden below us–came the scent of jasmine.

I was scented without jasmine, so I kept my distance. “I'm sorry to have come by when you're not feeling well,” I said.

“How dare you be polite to me after you've blackmailed your way into my house,” Marvella said. “‘Come by,' indeed. You've intruded. You and Mr. Drury have done nothing but intrude–into my community, into my family, and into my privacy.”

If I accomplished nothing else, I'd brought her color back. “You forgot to list Mr. Shepard,” I said. “He's the one who was found dead this morning.”

“You're correct,” Marvella snapped. “I have forgotten Mr. Shepard. Very shortly I will have forgotten you. Now, what did you have to say regarding my uncle?”

The gloves had come off in a hurry, but I was ready to play it that way. “He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Given his position in this county, he was probably
the
member.”

“It was not unusual for men of position to belong to that organization during the troubled times between the wars. They were men who recognized the threat to our country posed by the unwashed of Europe. You're too young to remember those days.”

“I remember the nights. And the men in the robes.”

“It may interest you to know, then, that some of those men have achieved high office in this state. Those men will answer a telephone call from me.”

“Will they also answer a call to arms?”

I'd noted before that Marvella's eyes were small, like Gilbert's. They had an intensity, though, that Gilbert's lacked. It was a fire no big doe eyes could ever handle.

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

“I'm asking if the men who burned the cross at Riverbend were supreme court justices and state senators.”

“You have the gall to accuse me of organizing that?”

“Do you have the gall to deny it?”

“Most emphatically.” The hand holding the black handkerchief came down on the arm of her chair with a sharp crack. “And I'd advise you not to repeat that accusation in front of reporters. The world may be falling apart, but in this corner of it, the Traynor name still means something.”

“Your daughter-in-law is fond of saying that.”

“My daughter-in-law,” Marvella sneered back, “will never be a Traynor in anything
but
name.”

“That's true of you, too, isn't it? You're really a Palliser, after all. You're part of the old regime. How did you wind up married to the man whose factory was attracting those unwashed Europeans to your little kingdom?”

Marvella stuck out what chin she had and said nothing.

“I've heard that your late husband fought the Klan. That must have made for some lively dinner conversations.”

“Is everyone in Hollywood as romantic as you and Carson Drury, Mr. Elliott? I used to think that you movie people saw through your own fables, that you only stamped them out to please a maudlin public. Mr. Drury seems genuinely to believe that this century has been some long morality play, with the little people triumphing over the mean, old, rich people in the end.” She laughed at that idea with a ridiculous, twittery, Billie Burke laugh.

“The Pallisers did lose,” I said.

“Did we? Am I about to be thrown off your estate? The Pallisers of this world don't lose, Mr. Elliott. We survive, that's the basic lie of Mr. Drury's silly movie. He really believes that his Albertsons would sit around waiting for progress to ruin them and then throw themselves under its wheels so he could have a symbolic ending for his tale.

“We don't fade away, we fight back. We die fighting if need be, like my son.”

“Your son died fighting the kind of men who burned the cross at Riverbend, Mrs. Traynor.” I had it all tied together in a neat package. But it so happened that my debating partner had a unifying vision of her own.

She sat up and stretched her head to the limit of her withered neck. “My son died because his country was drawn into a European war. It wasn't enough that they came here in their millions to threaten our way of life. We had to sacrifice the cream of our manhood to save them from themselves. Had Mark survived, he would have taken his place in this community. He would have resisted the forces that threaten it.”

He would have been out burning crosses himself, in other words. I couldn't believe that. “Your son was a Traynor, not a Palliser. No Palliser would have married Linda.”

Marvella fell back onto her pillows as though I'd slapped her. “No Palliser would have stayed married to her,” she said, her voice a moan with teeth. “She was a phase Mark would have passed through if he'd been spared. She was a token of his token rebellion, a symbol of the idealism of the war years. He would have rid himself of her soon enough.”

She had me there. A lot of wartime marriages had ended just that way–not because the combatants and the noncombatants had lost their idealism but because they'd lost the only thing they'd ever really had in common: a cause, an enemy. Mark and Linda might have struggled on with Marvella as a replacement enemy. She might have been the one Mark outgrew. But I couldn't bring myself to hit the old woman there.

“He can never be rid of her now,” she was saying. She made it sound like the worst part of his being dead.

Then, in a stronger voice, she addressed the heated air behind me. “There you are, finally.”

I turned in time to see a man step from a small door close to the center of the house. It was the navy blue guard whose job I'd jeopardized. He lost all my sympathy by fingering his nightstick as he crossed to us.

“May I have the sports section if you're finished with it?” I asked when he arrived.

“Remove this man from the estate,” Marvella said.

The guard left off fingering his nightstick and started fingering his gun. He jerked his head toward the house.

I tarried long enough to bid good-bye to my hostess. “Don't forget me yet,” I said.

27

I was dead on my feet when I got back to my own palatial estate, Riverbend. I had my own security guard, too, a lone sheriff's deputy, back on duty after a fatal night off. At least the Traynors' arrowhead collection and stuffed birds would be safe now from souvenir hunters. The deputy saved me a phone call to my probation officer, Frank Gustin. I watched in my rearview mirror as he radioed in his report: Suspect has returned to the scene of the crime. Over and out.

I cleaned myself up and changed my clothes, intending to hike down to Clark's cabin to discuss the night of the murder. Clark had told Gustin that he hadn't heard or seen a thing on Sunday night. He'd stayed sober, just in case the Klan returned, but he hadn't left his cabin. It wasn't much of a story, but I wanted to hear him tell it again.

I made the mistake of sitting down first–just for a moment–in one of the front-porch rocking chairs. When I woke up, it was dark, and headlights were coming at me down the drive–Sheriff Gustin's headlights, as it turned out.

Gustin climbed the porch steps gingerly, like a man who had ridden in on horseback from Illinois at least. I wasn't the only one in Traynorville who had missed a night's sleep.

“Sorry to wake you up,” Gustin said. “Anybody who can sleep in this heat in a hickory rocking chair must need his rest.”

“Pull one up,” I said.

“I daren't. I'm on my way home right now. Be lucky if I make it. I just stopped by to give you this like I promised. If you're fool enough to stay here by yourself tonight, you may need it.” He held out a flat, triangular paper parcel. My gun.

“I take it the bullets didn't match.”

“You wouldn't believe how much they didn't match.” Gustin didn't explain that odd remark, but he looked as though he wanted to.

“Flat stumped again?” I asked, to remind him of the morning after the cross burning when I'd been his sounding board.

“Not again. Still.” He shuffled his size twelve boots. “I heard you were out at Traynor House this afternoon. What were you after?”

“Mrs. Traynor didn't mention that when she phoned in her complaint?”

“No.”

“And it would have been impolite for you to ask.”

“Go easy on me, Elliott. I'm not one of your movie big shots. I'm just a hick sheriff trying to feed a family year in and year out on less money than your Mr. Drury paid for his last car.”

“Sorry,” I said. I found my cigarettes and shook one out for him. In the light of my match, he looked as if he'd aged ten years since Saturday. His eyes were closing by themselves, and what I'd previously taken for down on his fat cheeks was now plain old stubble.

“I went to Traynor House,” I said, “because I learned that Marvella Traynor's uncle may have had ties to the Klan. How is it you didn't know about that family skeleton?”

“I did know about it. At least, I think I did.” He pushed his straw hat back. “I mean, if anyone had asked me, I could have told them. But I didn't make the connection myself. Why would I have? Old man Palliser died twenty years ago.”

I could hear him scratching his head in the darkness. “Wait a minute. You aren't saying that Mrs. Traynor sent those spooks over here to scare you off, are you? Marvella Traynor, the woman who makes up the annual shortfall in the hospital fund out of her own pocket?”

“And passes out turkeys at Christmas time, probably,” I said. I swatted at a mosquito too slowly to worry it. “Best put that thought out of your mind, Sheriff. You've got kids to feed.”

We sat and smoked and didn't talk. Gustin might have been thinking about his family and how complicated his life had become. I was thinking about Linda Traynor, the last person to share a quiet evening on the porch with me, and how complicated her life had to be.

Linda was more than an unloved daughter-in-law. She was, as Marvella had put it, the symbol of her late husband's rebellion against his family. It wasn't an uncommon role for a newlywed to play, but Linda had been stuck in it for a decade and more, waiting for a man who was dead to return and resolve the situation.

Gustin ground out his smoke. Then, good ex-soldier that he was, he policed the area, pulling his cigarette stub apart, scattering the tobacco and tearing the paper into little bits. As he tore, he said, “We're never going to find the gun that fired the murder bullet.”

“Why not?”

“Because the bullet we pulled out of the wall had no markings on it. They tie a bullet to a certain gun because the rifling inside the gun's barrel scores the bullet. You probably know more about that than I do.”

“I'm familiar with the theory. Was the bullet too misshapen for the marks to be read?”

“Nope. It was in good shape. At the range it was fired, it passed through Shepard like he wasn't there. Then it found itself a nice, worm-eaten old beam to stop in. There were just no marks to read.”

“Every modern gun leaves those marks.”

“Then this bullet was fired by a blowgun. And don't say that blowguns don't leave scorch marks. I know they don't. I'd be searching every house in town for a smoothbore musket, but the lab boys say the bullet is modern. It's a standard, forty-five-caliber ACP round.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

I could just make out Gustin's picket fence grin. “Flat stumped, huh? Welcome to the club.”

“Thanks.”

“I did have an idea I wanted to run by you. You've heard of zip guns, I suppose.”

“Yes. They're homemade handguns that use a few inches of pipe for a barrel.”

“Unrifled pipe. I've never seen one, but I've read about them. Teenage gangs back east are using them. Maybe the gangs out your way, too.”

“So you think a visitor from L.A. might have snuck one out in his shaving kit? Why? Real guns aren't hard for grownups to buy in Los Angeles. They're even easier to buy in Indiana. Besides, I've never heard of a forty-five-caliber zip gun. They're usually twenty-twos. Even with that light a load, they're as dangerous to the shooter as they are to the target.”

“If you've got a better idea–” Gustin broke off talking and drew his gun. It was the fastest move I'd ever seen him make. “I thought I saw somebody out by the barn. You go around the far side of the house, and I'll go straight at him. Don't shoot at anything in a uniform.”

I had the paper wrapper off the automatic before I turned the near corner of the house. As I reached the far corner, I saw a running figure. He was crossing the backyard from my right to my left, going away from the barn and toward the wire fence that bordered the lawn.

I broke into a flat run, crossing the lawn at an angle to cut off the runner at the spot where he'd hit the fence. There was more moon out than there'd been on the night I'd chased a specter around the farmhouse. I could see that tonight's ghost was wearing a suit and a felt hat and that he was carrying something cradled in his arms. That burden gave me an advantage in speed. Even so, I didn't think I'd reach the fence first. But I'd get there in time to grab him as he climbed it.

Only he didn't bother climbing. He ran through the fence at full speed as though it weren't there. His secret was a gap in the fencing between two posts, set a man's width apart. On the other side of the gap was a solid wall of green corn, prematurely tall.

I stopped to listen. The sound of the man thrashing at the corn led me to a path that ran along the fence in the direction of the road. I started gaining again as soon as I was on the path, running with my gun arm out to keep the razor-edged corn leaves out of my eyes. I could feel my last cigarette as a finger poking me square in the chest.

I caught the guy twenty yards later, taking him down in mid-stride with my left arm around his knees. The fall knocked away the last of my wind. I clapped my gun to his head, misjudging the distance enough to get a grunt out of him.

“Damn,” he gasped. “You trying to bust my ear?”

“Shut up,” I managed to say. I could hear the cavalry coming up behind us. It actually sounded like cavalry; the sheriff's gun belt was jangling and creaking like harness.

“Got him?” Gustin asked between breaths.

“Got him.”

“Damn,” the man said.

One of the items of equipment on Gustin's belt was a flashlight. He switched it on as I rolled our guest over.

The light revealed a round, pale face, not recently shaved, and rabbity eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses that had somehow survived our fall.

“Casey Atherley,” Gustin said in the injured tone of a fisherman who has landed a tire. “Photographer on the
Traynorville Beacon
.”

“I think I broke a rib,” Atherley said.

Gustin prodded the prone photographer's rib cage with the toe of his boot. “Feel that?” he asked, though Atherley had already yelped.

“What are you doing out here?” Gustin asked.

“Trying to take a picture of the murder room.”

“With what?” This time the boot stopped just short of Atherley's ribs. He writhed anyway.

“My camera. I dropped it when I fell.”

I found the camera in the weeds a few yards down the path. It was a newspaper photographer's standard issue, a boxy Rapid 60. It made a sound like pennies in a tin bank when I picked it up.

“I thought you had orders to stay away from here,” Gustin said.

“That was before the murders. The Traynors can't kill this story now. There's no reason why the
Beacon
should miss out on it. I'd like to stand up.”

“That might be dangerous,” Gustin said. “We haven't determined the extent of your injuries yet.” His boot caressed Atherley's side.

My own ribs were starting to ache. I was seeing a part of Gustin I wouldn't have guessed existed. But for Linda's intercession, I might have gotten to know it very well.

I still had her share of the family clout behind me, so I said, “Let him up.”

Gustin stepped back, and I helped the photographer to his feet.

“How did you get past my man?” Gustin asked.

“This is a farm, for Christ's sake, not an island. Anyone with eyes and a sense of direction can find a way in. I found a pull-off on the side of the road out of sight of the drive and the house. I parked there and poked around and found this path.”

“Show us,” Gustin said.

Atherley led us out of the field, walking slowly, with one hand to his sore ribs. I thought our run had taken us most of the way to the road, but we'd actually covered less than half the distance. We came out of the field at a point where the road descended to cross a creek on a one-lane bridge. Atherley's ancient sedan was parked on the shoulder next to the bridge, out of sight, as he had said, of Gustin's man at the entrance to Riverbend.

“Keep an eye on him,” Gustin said to me. “I'm going to walk up a ways and signal my deputy. Then Casey and I will take a ride into town.”

When Gustin had jangled off, Atherley sank down onto the fender of the sedan. I'd tucked my automatic away in my belt. That left my right hand free for swinging the damaged camera back and forth. Atherley's eyes never left it.

“I might be able to help you,” I said, “if you come clean with me.”

“Come clean? I thought only people in the movies said that.”

There was more left in him than I'd thought. “I'm feeling like somebody in the movies tonight. Tell me about the last time you were out here.”

“You mean the eighth grade field trip when we heard all about how wonderful the Traynor family was?”

“I mean Friday night when you saw me coming out of the tack room of the barn and ran.”

“I was under strict orders to stay away from this place. It would have been more than my job is worth for me to have poked around out here.”

“And yet here you are, up to your neck and sinking fast.”

“Okay, wise guy. It was me you saw on Friday. I was looking for a lead on what Carson Drury was up to in Traynorville.”

“Are you sure you hadn't been tipped about the cross burning?”

“No. I wouldn't have run off if I'd known that was going to happen. A photo of that would have been my ticket out of this burg.”

“So you came back Saturday night to photograph the farm house burning down.”

“No. Okay, yes. I tried to. I got as far as the gap in the fence and spotted that faceless guy, Clark, prowling around, swinging a pipe.” His eyes went back to the swinging camera. “That guy gives me the creeps. I snuck back out the way I'd come.”

“How about Sunday night?”

“I was home all night. I can prove it.”

“You'll have to. What brought you back here tonight?”

“No one's gotten a picture of the murder room. I figured this was my big chance and I was going to take it, Clark or no Clark. But before I could get inside the barn, the Traynors' pet sheriff blundered in.”

I held up the camera and checked the big bowl of the flashgun. “No bulb.”

“Must have fallen out when I dropped it.”

“Huh. The film in here is unexposed?”

“Right.”

“So I can check for damage and not ruin anything?” I started to fiddle with the camera's switches and buttons.

“Stop that,” Atherley hissed. “All right. I took a picture. If you keep fooling around, you'll screw up the plate.”

I lobbed him the camera. “What plate?”

He unloaded it faster than I could tie my shoe. I held my hand out for the film, and he passed it over.

“Got a spare?”

“Of course.”

“Reload it. Gustin's going to expect to see film.”

Atherley was such a pro, he could load the camera and talk at the same time. “What's your angle, buddy?”

“I want to know who burned that cross and why. Get me some names, and you can have the film back.”

“This murder won't be news forever.”