If Dying Was All (12 page)

A chill night wind hit Easy as he reached the top of the hillside, bringing with it the smell of burned out trees and brush. Off to his right stretched a forest, tall walnut trees, birches and oaks. Many of them darker than the night would make them. Dozens of trees were leafless, branchless, burned to char by the recent fire. When the wind gusted, dark flakes of ashes flurried and the scent of fresh burning grew stronger.

Easy cut to his left and eased in among the trees in an unburned stretch of birches. He progressed, quietly, through the dark rows. Unseen birds called far off and small nocturnal animals were scurrying in the underbrush. The wind pulled dry leaves down from the treetops.

When he was a few minutes closer to the deserted resort area, Easy became aware of a new sound. He stopped still and narrowed his eyes, watching the patches of night between the trees. Metal struck against rock. Easy, crouched, moved toward the noise.

About a hundred yards ahead of him a dark figure showed between the straight black lines of the pines. Someone was digging there in a small clearing.

Easy stalked forward. He reached under his sweater and drew out his Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. The figure in the clearing had been digging for quite a while apparently. Easy now could see dirt piled in a two-foot high mound beside a long rectangular hole. Something he made out as rolled up burlap sacking had been tossed down beside the newly dug earth.

The shovel struck a rock again and sparks danced in the darkness. The digger grunted, muttering.

Thirty yards from the digger now, Easy tried to get even closer. Ten careful steps ahead and dead leaves suddenly erupted in front of him as a startled squirrel went chittering up the side of a dark tree.

Easy dropped to his knees, listening.

The digging had stopped and no sound came from the clearing.

Thorny brush cut off Easy’s view. He lowered himself to his side and carefully circled the brush, his eyes on the area of the digging. There was no one near the grave-size hole, no one showing in the circle of weedy, clear land.

Easy waited.

Then, off to his right some ten feet away, another squirrel decided to pop up and skitter into a tree.

A moment after the noise began a shot flashed out, then one more. The digger was in among the trees at the far side of the little clearing, firing toward the rustling squirrel.

Easy stayed silent, waiting.

The dark figure jumped up, showing for an instant, then ran away from the clearing and away from Easy. Branches snapped and leaves crackled, the sound quickly diminishing. Then there was silence again.

After waiting five full minutes longer, Easy made his way to the clearing. With his gun in his hand he went to the freshly unearthed grave and knelt beside it. His eyes had become used to the night dark and he could see what was down in the hole.

It was what was left of the body of a woman. Easy stood and moved once again into the woods. He knew he’d found Jackie McCleary.

The dome of the old dance pavilion was made of hundreds of squares of glass, linked together with a fretwork of ornamental iron. It glistened darkly on the cliffside above the ocean. Twisted cypress trees, knobby and bent, made a sparse wall between the ornate pavilion and the edge of the cliff. Easy, squatting in among the oaks on a knoll above the pavilion, watched. The walls of the domed building were glass above and tile below. Metal flowers and vines twisted up its sides. Within the glass pavilion a light glowed, dim and bobbing. A flashlight.

Easy, keeping in among the trees, went around the building. He spotted four doorways leading into the vast dance area. The thick doors on two of the entranceways were partially off their hinges, hanging open.

His gun held at head level and pointing upward, Easy worked his way nearer the pavilion. He could see the flashlight more clearly. It had been set for a moment on the edge of the large rounded bandstand at one end of the domed room. A woman in a car coat and slacks appeared and caught hold of the light, disappearing down out of sight with it.

From the sprung doorway Easy recognized Perry Burley. She was stretched out on the slick floor, attempting to pry a carved, wooden panel loose from the bandstand. She was alone, breathing heavily, puffing on a cigarette and intermittently coughing.

Easy crossed the threshold and kept in shadows, bent low so he wouldn’t be seen from outside. His eyes and ears told him there was no one in the big hollow dance pavilion except Perry. He strode forward, putting his back to the bandstand, and faced the sprawled out blonde.

“What was it, Bud?” Then she looked up. “Son of a bitch,” said Perry. “John Easy.”

“You won’t find anything,” Easy told her.

Perry shifted position until she was sitting on her heels. “What did you do with Bud?”

“Nothing. Where is he?”

“We heard something, something odd, outside and he took the rifle to go check. Ten minutes ago,” said Perry. “What do you mean, I won’t find anything?”

“Whatever it is Jackie McCleary hid,” answered Easy. “I’m the one who invented this particular hiding place.”

Slapping both hands on her thighs, Perry said, “Jesus, you mean that little, phony bitch Judy Teller shucked us with a story you gave her?”

Easy nodded. “What exactly is it you and your husband are after?”

“Money,” said Perry.

“Booth Graither’s $100,000?”

“Part of it.” Perry slapped her thighs again angrily. “Not the money they were supposed to take to Mexico … you know all about what really happened on the boat trip, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” answered Easy. “I do.”

“Well, this isn’t the Mexico money. This is $10,000 I knew Jackie had been putting aside. Look, Bud and I need money, need it badly. You know how it is when you suddenly find yourself in your thirties and nothing has quite come out right. We decided to try for the $10,000.”

“Where’d Jackie come by that?”

“Oh, it was Booth’s money to begin with,” said Perry. “I was pretty close to Jackie. She talked to me. About her childhood and about her terrible father. She talked about being afraid that even after she got to Mexico and everybody thought she was dead, she might not be content. Might not be able to stay there. Jackie thought she loved Booth, really loved him, but she’d thought that about other guys before. She was restless and she didn’t know if Mexico would cure that. So she wanted to have something set aside in case she decided to come back, to leave Booth and come back to life.”

“She took the $10,000 from Booth?”

“Not exactly,” said the blonde. “Booth, I probably don’t have to tell you, was a nut. A nice, sweet guy, but a nut. He’d give Jackie money all the time, to buy things or just because he liked to throw stuff around. Jesus, imagine having $100,000 to play with. If only Bud and I could …Anyway, Jackie, without confiding in anyone except me, put aside about $10,000.”

“You believe she really did.”

“Yes, I’m certain she did. Look, I knew her. She could be devious as hell, especially with men. Me, though, she was relatively honest with. When she told me about her little sinking fund I knew it was true.”

“She didn’t tell you where she was hiding the money?” said Easy.

“No,” said Perry. “I’d heard a lot from her, though, and I knew a couple of places where she liked to stash stuff. She had a hidey hole behind a bureau in that cottage of hers at her father’s place. A square of wall panel that comes out. She’d mentioned that once, long before she ever talked of the money she was setting aside.”

“You think she’d actually have come back to her father’s?”

“Yes, she might have,” answered the blonde. “Jackie had ways of sneaking in and out of the cottage without the old man knowing.” She paused, coughing out cigarette smoke. “I really ought to stop. Look, it wasn’t impossible she’d walk right back in the front door and tell that poor old bastard the suicide was all a joke. He would have welcomed her back, too. You’ve never seen her, met her in person, Easy. She’s got a special thing, an aura. Men, lots of them anyway, they can’t turn her down. She can do impossible, nasty things to them and then call them back, and they’ll come running. Sometimes I wish I had that knack.”

“There was no money in the cottage, though.”

“Obviously, or we wouldn’t have fallen for this setup of yours.”

Easy, his head still moving to watch all the entrances in turn, asked, “Why’d you wait all this time to go after the $10,000?”

“We didn’t need it back in 1965, for one thing,” said Perry. “Every year since, it seems, things get worse. The more Bud works, the less we have. Damnit, Easy, we need that $10,000. Maybe it was cruel to play a joke on old McCleary that way, but I’d have done it for a lot less than $10,000.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the flooring. “Besides, I was certain Jackie wasn’t going to dare to come back.”

“Why?”

“Because of Booth, of course,” replied the blonde. “She knows she’s not going to be able to talk herself out of a murder charge. She’ll have to stay away for good now. Bud and I have talked about trying for the $10,000 before. Seeing all that in the papers about Booth’s body being found out here was the final spur we needed. I never knew she’d killed him.”

“You saved some of her letters, all these years, in case you ever wanted to try fooling McCleary.”

“No, I saved a few scraps of her writing from the stuff in the apartment in San Amaro, simply as souvenirs at first,” said Perry. “I knew I’d probably never see her again, and I held on to a few things and some pictures. When you’re in your twenties you’re sentimental. Before you get all involved with money.” She looked up at Easy. “You knew it was me. Me who wrote the letters and pretended to be Jackie out in Manzana.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s hard enough being yourself, let alone somebody else,” said Perry. “We had to try it. I knew we couldn’t get the old man out of the place, recluse that he is, without a strong lure. And, damn it, I was sure Jackie must have hidden the money around there.”

Easy said, “I’ve found Jackie.”

Perry inhaled, eyes widening. “She’s back?”

“She never left.”

“Never left? Never left Los Angeles?”

“Never left this island,” he answered. “She’s dead.”

Perry stood up, steadying herself against the side of the bandstand. “You mean dead since then, since 1965?”

“I’d guess she’s been dead as long as Booth Graither.”

“But I thought she’d shot him,” said the blonde. “She was devious enough to do that. Kill him and take all that hundred thousand for herself.”

“Somebody else killed them both,” Easy told her.

Up on the bandstand a voice said, “Okay, you big son of a bitch, drop your gun. You should have figured you couldn’t watch the door in back of the bandstand.” Bud Burley was up there, a rifle in one arm and a large lantern-type flashlight swinging in his other hand. “Go on, bastard, get rid of the gun.”

“Wait now, Bud,” began Perry.

“Shut up. Shut up, Perry,” said the red-faced man. “I told that son of a bitch to …”

Glass exploded behind him and a slug hit Burley. He roared and staggered forward. The lantern looped up out of his hand and came down to smash on the dance floor.

E
ASY SLAPPED ANOTHER WAD
of ripped shirt onto Bud Burley’s upper left arm. “Hold onto that,” he told the wounded man. “Press hard.”

“Who shot me, one of your gunsel buddies?” asked Burley. His sunburned face was spotted with perspiration, and the moonlight coming through the glass dome gave it a lifeless, white tinge.

“Get your arm up higher,” said Easy. He had Burley propped against the bandstand and had helped the wounded man raise the arm up and rest it on the rim of the low stand. “Keep pressing that pad with your good hand.”

Perry Burley was hunched down beside them, getting back into her car coat after having taken off her shirt-blouse to tear into bandage strips. “We’ll have to get Bud to a hospital.”

“Eventually,” said Easy.

“It’s murder if you let me die here, you son of a bitch,” said Burley, grimacing at the slashed sleeve of his jacket and shirt.

“The slug isn’t in there,” Easy reminded him. “All you have to worry about now is stopping the bleeding.” He pulled off his sweater and draped it over Burley. “It might help to stay warm.”

“You’re awfully thoughtful, you dirty bastard.”

“Stay quiet, too.”

“Who is that out there?” asked Perry. “Is it someone who came with you?”

Easy shook his head. “I expect that’s Ned Segal. He’s the only other one I had Judy Teller call.”

“Ned? Why would he come here to San Obito?”

“To dig up Jackie McCleary’s body and take it somewhere else,” said Easy. “Before my anticipated visit out here tomorrow. He was afraid I might find it.”

“You said you did find it.”

“Only because I spotted him digging.”

Perry reached and wiped at her husband’s sweating face. “Then Ned’s not going to let us walk right out,” she said. “Walk right out and take poor Buddy to a hospital. Is he?”

“What the hell is all this talk about that offensive kike bastard?” said Burley. “While I’m slowly bleeding my life away.”

“If Ned knows where Jackie was buried,” said his wife, “he has to be the one who killed her.”

Easy said, “He killed both of them. Mitch Stammsky, too.”

“Why?” said the blonde.

Easy looked at her. “For the money,” he said. “And the diamonds.”

Burley grunted. “There were diamonds hidden someplace, too? Why didn’t you know about that, for Christ sake, Perry?”

“Jackie never told me about any jewels.”

“She may not have known,” said Easy. “Booth had taken the diamonds from his family and it’s possible he kept quiet about them, didn’t even tell Jackie. He may have intended to fence them in Mexico.”

Perry shook her head. “I never heard of any diamonds.”

“But Ned Segal had,” said Easy. “He mentioned jewels when I talked to him the other day.”

“What did he do?” asked Perry. “Back then in 1965 he wasn’t supposed to come to the island with Booth. He was only going to provide the boat.”

“He did come here, though,” said Easy. “He came here and killed both of them. He wanted that $120,000. He may not have even known ahead of time Booth Graither was also taking diamonds to Mexico with him. They could have been a surprise bonus Segal didn’t discover until after he’d killed the two of them and taken their luggage,”