Dead on the Level (15 page)

“I am about my business,” Casey said.

“That being?”

“That being what I intend to tell Mrs. Brunner.”

This could go on indefinitely. Casey screwed up his courage and crawled out of the coupé. As for that figure planted so threateningly in his path, he could handle him. “I’m not looking for souvenirs and I don’t want anybody’s autograph,” he said, turning toward the house, “but I am going to see Mrs. Brunner—unless she isn’t interested in hearing from her daughter.”

“Wait a minute!”

Casey paused. No, it wasn’t his imagination; the man in the plaid shirt had turned pale.

“Wait,” he repeated. “I’ll tell Mrs. Brunner you’re here.”

Casey lit a cigarette and waited. The caretaker had gone off at a dog trot and disappeared into one of the barns, and the cigarette hadn’t time to form an ash before Casey was grinding it out underfoot and watching the hurried but controlled approach of Mrs. Brunner. Controlled, that was the word for it. Casey couldn’t help admiring a woman like that. Phyllis had it, too, but it wasn’t the same. With Phyllis you were never quite sure whether she understood the situation, but Mrs. Brunner understood, accepted, and started making the best of things without so much as lifting her eyebrows. Now she was coming through the corral gate, a stately figure even in jodhpurs and an old tweed jacket. She removed a pair of soiled gloves as she walked, and her eyes, gray and steady, never left Casey’s face.

“You wished to see me?” she asked.

“I do,” Casey said.

“I didn’t get your name.”

“Morrow. (The lying was over now.) Casey Morrow.”

“And you say, Mr. Morrow, that you have word of my daughter.”

There was a tremor, ever so slight, in her voice. It was as if emotion were a thing not to be displayed before strangers yet sometimes impossible completely to conceal.

“She’s all right,” Casey said quickly. “No harm’s come to her.”

She wouldn’t throw her arms around his neck, naturally. She wouldn’t say anything for some small silence. She looked out over the rolling hills and stared at the distance. “Thank God!” she whispered, and that was all. But in another moment she would remember Casey and start asking questions, and this, he decided, was as good a time as any to get on with it. The caretaker had remained in the barn, and the coupé was handy should a quick retreat seem in order.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he continued. “You’re wondering who I am and how I happen to know so much. You’re wondering why, if your daughter’s all right, she isn’t here herself.”

“Perhaps I know,” Mrs. Brunner said quietly.

She had turned toward him again as she spoke, and Casey found it impossible to look away from her eyes. The things they contained were too deep and too many to be understood, but part of it was plain. So plain that he felt a little sick.

“You are, of course, the man my daughter met at the bar.”

The words were like a hammer blow, direct and accurate. Casey nodded.

“You have been with her all this time?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will tell me, Mr. Morrow, and no evasions, please—” She hesitated, but only for an instant. “Did Phyllis kill her father?”

What do you say to a woman whose husband has been murdered and whose daughter has been missing for a week? What do you say, Casey Morrow? He struggled through the shock her blunt words had created like a man coming out of an anesthetic. This was the thing she had suspected all the time. Not him; not the “mystery man in gray,” but her own daughter! Why? Without thinking, Casey blurted out the question. But he wasn’t going to get an answer that way. Suddenly the woman was distant; without moving she had drawn away.

“Who are you, Mr. Morrow?”

“Practically nobody,” Casey said.

“But you know the whereabouts of my daughter.”

“That’s right.”

“I see.” Her face was very white now, but not with fear. “And how much are you asking to divulge this information?”

Strangely enough, that particular approach had never entered Casey’s mind, and yet there was logic in her assumption. In any event, this question was easier to handle than the last one. He didn’t even like to think about it.

“I’m not holding your daughter for ransom, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “Miss Brunner can come home any time she pleases. That’s the trouble; she doesn’t want to come. She doesn’t even know that I’m here now.”

If his words caused any surprise, Mrs. Brunner absorbed it without any outward sign. “I didn’t want you to worry,” he added.

“Worry?” A faint trace, almost a whisper of a smile, curved Mrs. Brunner’s mouth. It was, Casey noted, a wide, firm mouth, but there was something almost tragic about that smile.

“I know,” Casey said quickly, “it’s been almost a week. I wanted to get in touch with you before, but I couldn’t Phyllis—”

Casey hesitated. There was no need to blurt out everything even if he did feel sorry for the woman.

“Yes, Mr. Morrow?”

“Miss Brunner was afraid.”

“Of the police?”

There it was again, the suspicion thinly veiled.

“No, not the police. She’s afraid of her father’s murderer.”

Something happened then, something Casey wasn’t sure about. Mrs. Brunner made no sound but something happened to her face. Something lighted up inside, like a candle quickly snuffed. “You sound as if you know considerably more than just my daughter’s whereabouts,” she said at last. “Perhaps we should continue this inside.”

She’s stalling for time
, Casey thought.
She’s trying to figure me, just as I’m trying to figure her. But there can’t be any monkey business about getting to the phone
. Anyway, that didn’t seem to be the idea. Mrs. Brunner led the way along a white gravel path lined with shrubs and bushes all bedded down for the winter; she led to a pair of double French doors and then ushered him into a large, cheerful room paneled in knotty pine and brightened with plenty of chintz and an open fire blazing away in a wide fireplace. It was the library, Casey decided, or maybe the den, and it was just right. Just right for taking your shoes off and relaxing on one of the crisp divans with a book. Not that Casey was bookish, but it was that kind of room. Not a place to be tense or frightened in. A very difficult place to concentrate on murder.

“Coffee, Mr. Morrow?” she asked (as if he’d merely dropped in from the next farm). “Or have you had your breakfast?”

“Never touch the stuff,” Casey said, “breakfast, I mean. But if you’re having coffee—”

It was that kind of house. You ask for something and pretty soon it came to you on a silver tray.
I
wonder
, Casey asked himself,
how it would have felt to be a kid in a home like this?
The coffee even smelled better than Ma’s, probably because there was no essence of beer floating around. It tasted as good as it smelled. Casey was drinking in a lot more than just coffee, and it wasn’t until his cup was almost drained that he began to feel Mrs. Brunner’s eyes.

“I guess you’re pretty anxious to hear about Phyllis,” he said. The familiarity of the given name came out naturally. Casey didn’t even notice.

“I’ve waited a week,” she said quietly. “Among other things, life has taught me patience.”

Casey set his empty cup down on the wide leather-topped coffee table that separated his chair from hers and leaned forward. “Pardon me for asking, Mrs. Brunner,” he began, “but weren’t you at all worried about her?” The emphasis on the pronoun sounded a bit harsh. “I mean,” he added quickly, “about what had happened to her. Your question outside caught me a little off base.”

“You’re fond of her?” Mrs. Brunner asked.

“She’s a nice kid.”

“And very attractive.”

Casey wasn’t much for blushing, but he felt a little hot around the neck.

“I was worried about her, of course,” Mrs. Brunner continued. “I suppose it’s only natural to give vent to one’s most burdensome fear the most quickly. When you told me she was all right, well, what was I to think? And that, I believe, brings us back to something you said outside.”

“It does,” Casey admitted. “Phyllis is afraid to come home.” He let the statement stand alone for a moment. Mrs. Brunner said nothing. This was his story now. He took it from the beginning, from the meeting at the Cloud Room bar, which she already knew about, straight up to Big John’s (mentioning no names). He left out about the marriage. That would have to come later when this mess was cleared up.

“So you’ve undertaken an investigation of your own,” she reflected.

“I have to. This is my skin, too.”

“And have you learned anything?”

“A few things. Tell me, Mrs. Brunner, did you ever hear your husband speak of a man named Groot—Carter Groot?”

There was one thing that Phyllis and Mrs. Brunner had in common—that intense, almost disconcerting way of staring straight into his eyes as he talked. If the name, or his mention of it, meant anything to the woman its meaning was certainly invisible.

“No,” she said at last. “I’m sure he never mentioned such a man in my presence. Is he a clue?”

She smiled a little over that last word; not making fun of him exactly, but not being overly gullible, either.

“Definitely,” Casey said. “Carter Groot is a private investigator hired by your husband. He finished up his job and was paid off Monday. Monday night your husband was killed.”

He really didn’t have to remind her of that, but she looked a little vague. A little confused. “I don’t understand,” she said. “A private investigator? What was he investigating?”

Casey hesitated. He could tell her what he suspected about Gorden, passing it off as certain knowledge; but that would leave him exactly where he was when he came. It was what Groot had learned that he was after now, and for that he would need help. He was going to have to ask this woman to take him at his word; to trust him a lot farther than he, personally, would care to trust anybody. The only way to do it, he decided, was to level from here on in.

“I don’t actually know what he was investigating,” he said. “I have my suspicions. Pretty solid suspicions, too. You see, Mrs. Brunner, Carter Groot is missing. He’s been missing since Monday night.”

A little while later—such disclosures took some digesting—Mrs. Brunner spoke again in a low, almost hollow voice.

“And your suspicion, Mr. Morrow?”

“How long have you known Lance Gorden?”

It was no laughing matter, certainly not to Casey Morrow fighting for his happiness, if not his life; but the tension that had been mounting—silently, but mounting, nevertheless—snapped at the sound of her laughter like a brittle branch that has borne its last weight. “So it’s Lance again,” she cried. “Forgive me, Mr. Morrow. I don’t mean to be rude—”

“Lance again?” Casey echoed.

“This is Phyllis’s idea?”

“Well, to begin with.”

“I knew it. Every time she has a tiff with Lance he becomes a mortal enemy with designs on her fortune. A natural enough fear among young women of wealth, I suppose. I never had that worry myself.”

Casey wasn’t sure whether that last observation was tinged with relief or regret. The only thing he knew at the moment was that Mrs. Brunner wasn’t going to laugh off Lance Gorden as a murder suspect. Not after that mêlée on the sidewalk in front of Maggie’s she wasn’t! He verged on recounting that experience, too, but something warned him she would only alibi it off. Speaking of alibis—

“I see by the papers that Gorden claims to have been out here all night Monday,” he said.

She wasn’t laughing now. His tone had a warning in it.

“I don’t want to tell you what to do, Mrs. Brunner, but I wouldn’t be so quick to back up a lie like that one, not even for a prospective son-in-law.”

“You’re sure it was a lie, Mr. Morrow?”

“Positive.”

Casey felt better. He always felt better when he took the offensive. That’s what came from not growing a few more inches. “I’m not saying that Gorden is a murderer, or that he isn’t. But he could be, isn’t that right, Mrs. Brunner?”

He didn’t realize how straight she had been sitting until she relaxed. And it wasn’t exactly relaxing; it was more like retreating. “I—I suppose so,” she admitted, “but it’s so hard to believe!”

“It must have been hard to believe that your husband was murdered,” Casey said. “But he was.”

There was a clock somewhere in the room. It ticked very loudly during their silences.

“Mr. Morrow.”

“Yes,” Casey said.

“What do you want of me?”

“Time,” Casey said. “Time to finish a little digging operation I’m on before you tell the police about this visit. That’s one of the things I want.”

“And in addition?”

This was something Casey had been mulling over for several days. The angle. The motive. The way he saw it, it all came back to Gorden handling the funds for Mrs. Brunner’s projects, and the project of the hour was Green Pastures Foundation. He put it to her straight. She answered straight, just as he knew she would. Yes, Gorden controlled the funds, Gorden drew up the plans, Gorden did the purchasing.

“Purchasing?” Casey echoed.

“The site,” she explained. “Lance found an ideal place last fall. As soon as he told me about it, I wrote out a check.”

“You or Mr. Brunner?” Casey demanded.

Mrs. Brunner smiled. “My husband and I had a joint account. You may answer your own question any way you please.”

Casey hadn’t meant it that way. He was only trying to find the motivation that had started Darius Brunner’s suspicion of Gorden rolling. “You wrote out a check to Gorden?” he persisted.

“No, I did not. The check was made out to the seller of the property. One hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Morrow. You were going to ask, of course?”

“I was.”

“And you find something sinister in this transaction?”

She was laughing at him again, not outwardly but Casey caught on. “I don’t know,” he answered. “That depends on what you got for your hundred thousand.”

“Yes, I suppose it does. It’s an old estate, actually. House, barns, orchard, and acreage. Ideal for our purposes. There’s even a small lake, Lance tells me.”

“Tells you?” Casey pounced on the phrase with a gleam in both eyes. “Then you haven’t seen the place?”