Dead Low Tide (10 page)

When I got out to my place, Big Dake was waiting for me, sitting on my front steps and smoking his pipe. We talked it
all over. He had some thoughtful things to say about how in the midst of life we are in death, and so on. I could see that he was deeply and profoundly moved, but he had an irritating way of sounding like one of the earlier prophets.

“I wonder what will happen to Key Estates,” he said.

“You bring up an embarrassing point, Dake.”

“Do I?”

“I have a contract to take it over. Oh, I don’t mean buy it. I couldn’t buy ten shore feet of it. I mean to be in charge of completion.”

“Great God!” he said wonderingly.

“I know. What will they think of next? You know and I know that I can’t do it without you. You wouldn’t be working for me, except nominally. From a practical point of view, it will be the other way around, I guess. I need your opinion on this. We could combine the whole three crews and make Gordy Brogan a kind of labor foreman. Then you can keep on the move, telling Gordy how things have to be done. And I can run around yipping, and do the paperwork, and chase materials.”

“I don’t believe Brogan will take my advice, Andy.”

“Hell, I can kid him into it.”

He thought it over, tapped out his pipe on my steps, and stood up. “It might just work, Andy. I’ll do some thinking on it tonight. You say you have a contract? I’ve been with him a long time, and we’ve never had a contract.”

“I think he thought something was going to happen.”

“You don’t think he killed himself, then?”

“No, Dake, I don’t. I did—but now I don’t.”

“That’s a terrible thing, to take a life. God gives life. The person who takes it has to be a devil.”

“I guess so.”

He pulled at his beard, lifted his big broad chest in a sigh, and got into his car. He waved once as he drove away slowly. Before I was in the house, a police sedan drove up, bringing Wargler, George, and a young cop I hadn’t seen before. It turned out his name was Jimmy, and he carried a fingerprint outfit.

They dusted my back door handle, and the interior knobs, and looked sagely at the two reds and looked at my spinning outfit, and stood in my garage and stared at the empty nail. Jimmy took some flash pictures here and there, seemingly at random. They went away talking in low voices among themselves.

I was suddenly aware, simultaneously, of hunger and weariness. I ate a couple of fast sandwiches, drank a full quart of milk, stripped down to my shorts, and went to sleep on top of the sheets—went to sleep like falling on a horse that was galloping too fast and too far.

When Elly Tickler woke me by screaming through the window, I saw that the sun was down pretty far. I sat on the edge of the bed, everything blurred and out of focus, and she yelled again, “She’s hanging on.”

“What? Who?”

“She’s on my phone. Some woman. How do I know who? Next time, Andy, I’m coming with a bucket of ice water, I swear. Now get a move on you.”

I took a few seconds to splash cold water in my face. Then I pulled on my pants, stuffed my feet into moccasins, and went out to where Elly waited impatiently.

I TOOK LONG STRIDES
down toward Elly’s place at the entrance, and she padded along beside me. It took unusual circumstances to betray Elly into that much effort.

“Heavens, isn’t it awful! On the radio and in this evening’s paper. Now there was a man.”

“Sure was.”

“A man with a lot of juice. A real man—type man like my Sam was. Once we didn’t have a jack and Sam held up the front end of the car while Terry changed the tire.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Who do you think gigged him, Andy? A real crime of passion, I’ll say. With a woman in it someplace. God, you got a long pair of legs on you. You watch. A woman, and I’ll betcha bottle of rye.”

“No bet.”

“Then you know! Come on, Andy. Tell old Elly.”

I went on in and back to the phone on the hall table and picked it up. “This is Andy McClintock.”

The voice was lost, and far, far away, as it said, “Andy. This is Mary Eleanor.”

“Oh. How are you feeling?”

“Far away from myself. Like I was two people. Oh, Andy, it’s so dreadful. Could you come over?”

“I guess so. You sure you want to see me?”

“Of course I do. Or I wouldn’t ask you, would I, now?” Coquetry seemed automatic, artificial, like a smile painted on a mask. “I sent that nurse on home, and the doctor phoned me and I told him I slept fine and I guess I’ll be all right. As all right as I
can
be.” There was a little dry click in her voice. A ghost sob.

“Half an hour, then.”

I hung up and Elly was leaning over me. “You
saw
him, didn’t you? With that thing in his neck. Dear God, it must have been grim.”

“Now, Elly. You behave.”

“I saw that big fat Wargler driving in and out of here. What’d he want?”

“Don’t tell anybody. I’m a suspect.”

“You! They
must
be hard up.”

“Elly, I got a date.”

“Can’t you talk to me at all?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll talk tomorrow.”

“That’s a promise now. A true promise. I’ll be around.”

I went back to my place and took a fast shower, put on a dark blue short-sleeved shirt and oyster-colored slacks, and pasted my hair down with water. I drove out to their house—her
house. The black MG was alone in the curved drive. The maid let me in the front door and pointed a spectral finger toward the terrace. I went out. The sun’s rim was almost touching the flat gray-blue of the gulf. She wore a flouncy yellow skirt and a narrow black halter, and she sat tipped back in a barwa chair, looking at me through the V of her bare feet, an Old-Fashioned glass cradled in her hands, the way a child holds a mug.

Her face looked stained, tear-battered, and slightly drunk. She held up her glass. “Here. And one for you.”

The trick rubber bowl of ice and the bottle were on a narrow table against the terrace wall. I fixed and took hers to her, sat down on the wall with mine.

“I guess I’m pretty terrible, sitting like this and drinking and wearing such a real loud bright skirt.”

“Not so terrible.”

“It only happened this morning. But it’s like it was weeks and weeks ago. Like he’d been dead—See, I can say it—like he’d been dead for just
so
long.”

“That’s the shot he gave you. It will do that. That’s why they give them.”

“I’m glad you came, Andy. I don’t want to drink all by myself, and keep wondering why they want to come talk to me in the morning.”

“Who wants to come talk to you?”

“That big fat silly old Chief of Police we got here. What does he want with me?”

“He’s got it in his head that it was murder.”

She had the glass halfway to her lips; she stopped it in mid-flight. I couldn’t read the odd expression in her eyes. She was
silent for what seemed a long time. Then she drank deeply, lowered the glass, and said, “Poo. He’s just trying to make a real thing out of that job of his.”

“Jack Ryer thinks it was murder, too.”

She flared right up over that. “Who cares what he thinks? He thinks he’s too damn good for us.”

“And I think it was murder, too, Mary Eleanor. And by now, I’d guess nine-tenths of the town thinks so.”

“I hate this terrible dusty little old town and I’m getting out of it, too. I’m going away just as soon as I can. And stay away. You’ll see.”

The sun was all gone and there were no clouds to make a sunset. Just a vague red glow way out there at the horizon, with the blues and grays moving in on us. Something chased bait a hundred feet from shore, and they flashed in panic, like new silver dollars thrown flat and hard so that they skipped.

“He’ll ask you, Mary Eleanor, where you two went last night, and so on.”

“How do I know where John went? We’d go out together when we had to, when there were people and places where we had to be together. Other times I never knew, and I gave up telling him where I was going.”

The maid came out, and said, “O.K. I’m going now, m’am?”

“Goo’night, Ephaylia.”

“You be all right, m’am?”

“I’ll be all right.”

The maid gave me an obscure and opaque glance, and left. Mary Eleanor held her glass out with childish imperiousness. I fixed her drink and took it back to her and sat again on the wall. I was puzzled.

“Mary Eleanor, you made it sound as if you and John were very close until he started acting—odd. Now you make it sound as if you weren’t getting along.”

“Don’t think too much, Andy. That’s what gets people in trouble. How much can I trust you, Andy?”

“If you hadn’t already decided to, you wouldn’t ask that.”

“You’re too smart about me, honey, I think.”

“Get to it, Mary Eleanor. Why did you call me over here?”

“Don’t be cross with me. Please, dear. I looked all over the house, Andy. All over. It’s something I lost. I won’t tell you what it is. Maybe John took it. Maybe he took it and put it in his desk down at the office. Go look in his desk down there, Andy, honey, and find it for me.”

“Oh, great! Find something when I don’t know what to look for.”

“Oh, it’s a brown envelope. So big.” She made the size of an eight-by-eleven envelope with her hands. “Addressed to me. Mailed from Miami some time ago. It’s addressed to me so you know it’s mine, and I want it.”

“You want me to go snuffling again. Is that it?”

“Just for me. For Mary Eleanor. Sad widow girl.”

“No. I got into this somehow and I am now detaching myself as carefully as possible, and I am not going into his desk for even a yellow pencil.”

“You look in there and find it and bring it to me.”

“No.”

“I’ll give you—five hundred dollars. You go right now and look and here’s his keys.” She threw them at me. I caught them. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I could make a good impression on Wargler by turning them over to him. I tossed them on the table with a mental note.

“Bring it to me when you find it, and don’t peek.”

She was beyond reason. I wondered how much she had managed to soak up since awakening. The husky belts she had taken since I’d been there hadn’t done her much good. The empty glass rolled out of her hand and broke on the terrace floor and she giggled. She swung her legs out of the barwa chair and stood up, took two wobbling rubber-legged steps and lurched at me and clung, saying softly, “Oooo, Andy. Old Andy going round and round. Sit still.”

“You better go to bed.”

“Take me to bed, old Andy. Carry. Never make it with everything all tippy.”

I picked her up—a very light-weight package. She clung to me and called out the turns. There was just enough light in the house so I could avoid the furniture. I took her in and put her down on the bed. She’d laced her thin fingers together at the nape of my neck and she wouldn’t let go of me.

“Lie down, old Andy, and hold me tight.”

It is an odd kind of irritation and embarrassment, like getting your foot stuck in a wastebasket. She had a wiry strength in those thin arms. She meeched onto me, and was nibbling wet little kisses along my jaw line. I reached back and got her hands untangled and pushed them back toward her and she swung a leg over my arm. As I was getting that unhooked, she latched onto my head again. It was like walking into too many cobwebs in the woods. She was breathing like a little furnace, and smelling like old Kentucky mash. I finally got all of me loose at once and went back like a guard pulling out of the line when the ball is snapped.

“All right for you,” she said. “All right for you!”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Don’t you dare go now. You come right here.”

As I went through the house I heard her yelling at me. I stopped and went back to the terrace and picked up the desk keys and went on out to the car and drove away from there, breathing a little hard myself, but not from any unrequited desire. More like the guy who, with a hop, skip, and jump, slams the cage door a half-step ahead of the panther. It was about seven-thirty. As I drove I tried to make excuses for her. Liquor plus loss plus emotional turmoil equals … That didn’t work, and I couldn’t even figure myself as virtuous, because I hadn’t denied myself anything I wanted. And I knew that if Andrew Hale McClintock had succumbed, it would be the kind of memory I couldn’t scrub off my soul with a wire brush.

As I drove through town I started thinking about the envelope, and about my personal involvement, and the hard little eyes of George and the Chief, and about how Mary Eleanor had led me to believe she and John got along fine, and Steve refuting that little misdirection. No, I wasn’t going to search his desk, but I made myself a fat excuse to go to the office. Some details about Key Estates to check. And who had a better right to be in the office? That ambitious intelligent young McClintock guy, of course. I parked and whistled cheerfully as I crossed the sidewalk to the door. I unlocked it and went in, and gave John’s desk a sidelong look as I went to my own. The lamp on my desk left John’s desk in semidarkness. I wondered if, perhaps, there was a completion schedule for Key Estates in John’s desk. If I was going to run the job, I would have to know about that. Of course. And so I went over and selected a desk key out of the batch of keys she’d tossed at me.

The key went into the shallow middle drawer of his desk. Unlocking that would unlock both tiers of side drawers. The key went in easily, but it turned too freely—turned with a little grating sound of broken parts. I turned on his desk light and examined the lock. The wood was gouged where it had been pried, and the latch had snapped off. It took me ten minutes to go through the desk and find there was no schedule on Key Estates—and no brown envelope. There was nothing personal in the desk—just forms and drawings, and magazines.

I closed his desk up, turned off the light and went back to my own desk. I sat on the corner of my desk, rubbing my chin, trying to be logical. My desk lamp was canted just enough so that it gleamed faintly against the big front expanse of glass. I saw a tallish man standing there, looking in. It gave me a jolt. And a most odd impression. An impression that is hard to describe. It relates back to something I hadn’t remembered in years.