Nightshades (Nameless Detective) (10 page)

Frank O‘Daniel was the person who’d died in the explosion, all right; I got the word on that Sunday morning, when I went to the sheriffs office in Redding to keep my promise to Telford. O’Daniel had been the only casualty. They’d found his charred remains in the
Kokanee’s
cockpit—and his blown-off arm floating around among the debris in the take—and they had identified him through his dental charts. An autopsy had been performed, but nothing had come of that—no indications of foul play.

“I don’t see how the coroner can stand his job,” Telford said. He shook his head, leaned back in his desk chair, and belched dyspeptically. “Must have been like trying to autopsy a piece of overcooked steak.”

Nice analogy, I thought. But I said, “Yeah, I guess. Have you notified Mrs. O’Daniel yet?”

“I just got back from talking to her a few minutes ago.”

“How did she take it?”

He grimaced. “The way they usually take it. Cried some and carried on.”

“Like he was the love of her life, huh? Like she can’t bear the thought of going on without him?”

“More or less.” Now he was frowning. “What’re you getting at?”

“It wasn’t that way between them,” I said, and I told him the things I’d found out about Helen O’Daniel and the other things I suspected—an affair with Munroe Randall, perhaps another one with Paul Robideaux.

Telford gave that some thought. Then he belched again, said ruefully, “My wife made a Spanish omelette with hot sauce for breakfast,” unwrapped a Rolaids tablet, chewed and swallowed it, and said, “You don’t think what happened at Mountain Harbor was an accident?”

“Let’s just say I’m suspicious. How does it look to you?”

“Suspicious,” he said, “but not enough to get me excited about it—yet. No evidence so far that says it was anything but an accident. Or
how
it could’ve been anything but an accident.”

“But you’re still working on it?”

“Oh, we’re real tenacious types up here in the sticks,” he said mildly. “We’re not too smart, but once we get our teeth into something we just don’t like to let go.”

“I’m like that too,” I said without missing a beat. “It’s a good way for a detective to be.”

That was the right thing to say, for a change; maybe this was going to be a better day than the last one—as long as I paid more attention to what came out of my fat mouth. Telford made a sound that was half grunt and half belch and said, “Yeah, it is. Well, I’ve been in touch with Hank Betters, over at the police department. He thinks two business partners dying in odd accidents within a week of each other is suspicious, same as you and I do. But there’s also no evidence of foul play in the Munroe Randall case; you know that. Until some evidence turns up, on one case or the other—
if
it does—there’s no use in any of us getting excited. You agree?”

“I agree. But I’d like to keep poking around on my own, if you don’t mind.”

“Why should I mind? You’ve got a good rep—I checked you out last night—and there’s no reason you shouldn’t keep on working.”

“Thanks.”

“For what? I’m always grateful for a little help from a big-city investigator.”

“Put the needle away, okay? I don’t think you’re a hick.”

He grinned a little and ate another antacid tablet. “Suppose both Randall and O‘Daniel
were
murdered,” he said. “Who do you figure for it? O’Daniel’s wife?”

“Well, she might be mixed up in it. She’s got plenty of motive.”

“So does the surviving partner.”

“Treacle’s also the most obvious suspect. He’d have to be pretty stupid.”

“Maybe he is,” Telford said. “All murderers are stupid, especially the ones that try to be clever.”

“You talk to him yet?”

“On the phone. He’s on his way down.”

“How did
he
take the news?”

“Seemed pretty shaken up. We’ll see when he gets here. Who else has motive, far as you know?”

“The artist, Robideaux, for one.”

“
If
he was involved with Mrs. O’Daniel.”

“Even if he wasn’t,” I said.

“You mean the hassle between Northern Development and the people in Musket Creek? Yeah, that’s another angle.”

“The best one of all, maybe.”

I got out the threatening letter Frank O‘Daniel had received. It had been in my wallet and had suffered some water damage last night, but it was still intact and the printing on it was still legible. I passed it over to Telford, explaining what it was and where I’d got it. I also apologized for not having remembered it last night—not that the oversight mattered much. None of us had known for sure then that O’Daniel was the victim.

He said after he’d scrutinized it, “If this is the McCoy, you could be right about Musket Creek being the best angle. The only thing is . . .” He tapped the letter with his fingernail. “Did Randall receive anything like this before he died?”

“Not that anybody claims to know about.”

“Any other kind of threat?”

“Apparently not.”

“Then how come O‘Daniel got one? Assuming both men were murdered, why put O’Daniel on his guard with a note? Why not just blow him up?”

“You said it yourself: murderers are stupid.”

“Mm.”

“Could be, too, that the note was sent by somebody else in Musket Creek—a crank thing. Both Treacle and O‘Daniel told me they were harassed a while back by hang-up telephone calls. This fits the same pattern. There doesn’t
have
to be a connection between the letter and O’Daniel’s death.”

Telford ruminated in silence.

“Another thing,” I said. “The note didn’t put O’Daniel on his guard. He shrugged it off as crank stuff.”

“He did, huh?”

“He also shrugged off something else,” I said, and I told him about Jack Coleclaw’s attack on O’Daniel at the Northern offices and how I’d managed to break it up.

“I think I’d better have a talk with Coleclaw,” Telford said. “As soon as I get done with Treacle.”

“I think I’ll see what I can find out about Mrs. O’Daniel and Paul Robideaux. Unless you have any objections . . .”

“Be my guest. Just be sure to let me know if you find out anything .”

“First thing.” I got on my feet.

Telford said, “Those burns hurting you much?”

“Some. Why?”

“The way you move. Your face looks raw too.”

“It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks,” I said. But I was aware of the dull ache again, now that he’d called my attention to it.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d wear a hat outdoors. And stay out of direct sunlight.”

I took my old shapeless fisherman’s hat out of my back pocket and showed it to him. “I already thought of that.”

“Smart guy,” he said, but there was no irony in his voice. He was eating another Rolaids and grimacing when I walked out of his office.

I went across the outer lobby, past a morose-looking guy who was explaining to a deputy that he
hadn’t
been poaching, the damned doe had been shot by somebody else and had staggered over to where he was camped and what the hell was he going to do, let all that good meat just lie there and rot? It was an interesting story but the deputy wasn’t buying it; I wouldn’t have bought it either, in his place.

Heat slapped at me when I stepped outside, making my face and hands burn dully. I put the hat on so that it drooped down over the upper half of my face. There wasn’t much direct sunlight to worry about; you couldn’t see the sun at all at the moment. Clouds had begun piling up sometime during the night and there were thunderheads obscuring Mt. Shasta to the east. Storm building. Which was fine by me; maybe it would cool things off.

I started down the front steps. A big, paunchy man was coming along the walk from the parking area; he stopped when he saw me and stood there. I recognized him at just about the same time.

Jack Coleclaw.

He waited, stolidly, for me to get to where he was. Then he said, “You’re the fellow in O’Daniel’s office the other night.”

“The one who broke up the trouble—that’s right.”

“Insurance detective,” he said, as if the words were a pair of obscenities.

I just looked at him. He seemed nervous, ill-at-ease. And worried. It was hot, but it wasn’t hot enough to make a man sweat the way he was sweating.

“I never meant to hurt him, mister,” he said. “I just . . . I lost my head for a minute, that’s all. I wouldn’t of choked the life out of him, even if you hadn’t come in. I’m not a killer.”

“Tell that to Jim Telford, Mr. Coleclaw.”

“Who?”

“Sheriff’s investigator in charge of the O‘Daniel case. You’ve heard what happened to Frank O’Daniel, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I heard,” Coleclaw said. “On the radio in my truck a little while ago. That’s why I’m here—I figured they’d want to talk to me, even if it was an accident.”

“Was it?” I said.

He wiped sweat off his face with one of his big paws. “You trying to say it wasn’t?”

“No. I’m saying it might not have been.”

“What, then? Somebody blew that boat up some way?”

“That’s a possibility.”

“Well, what does this Telford think?”

“Ask him yourself; he’ll tell you.”

“No, listen, I’m asking you. He don’t think I had anything to do with it, does he?”

“Did you, Mr. Coleclaw?”

“No! Christ, no. I wasn’t anywhere near Shasta Lake last night. I was home and I can prove it. My kid was there with me.”

“Like I said—tell that to Jim Telford.”

“Okay. But I’m telling you too. I didn’t have anything to do with O’Daniel getting killed and I didn’t have anything to do with Randall getting killed either. I was home with my son that night too. ”

I had nothing to say.

“Nobody in Musket Creek had anything to do with them two dying,” he said. “You understand? Nobody!” He wiped his face again, hunched his shoulders, and stepped around me and went away up the steps.

I watched after him until the building swallowed his bulk, thinking: Funny bird—what yanks his chain for him, anyway? I couldn’t decide whether or not he was dangerous; I couldn’t get much of a handle on him at all. Well, maybe Telford could. Or maybe there just wasn’t much of a handle to get hold of in the first place. I shrugged and swung around and started over toward the parking lot.

And Martin Treacle’s Continental was there, just skidding into one of the diagonal slots nearby. Treacle was behind the wheel, and he had two passengers. One, I saw as they got out, was the secretary, Shirley Irwin. The other, for some reason, was Kerry.

Treacle was in a dither. His face was pale, his hands twitched, his eyes kept doing odd little flicks and rolls, as if he were about to go into some kind of fit, and he had a slight stutter when he spoke. He came charging over to me and said, “Why didn’t you call me last night? For God’s sake, why didn’t you tell—
tell
me what happened?”

“Take it easy, Mr. Treacle. I didn’t call you because I didn’t want to sound a false alarm; nobody was sure yet it was your partner who died in the explosion.”

“You should have notified me anyway. I had a right—a right to know, didn’t I?”

Kerry and Miss Irwin made us a not very appealing foursome. The secretary didn’t seem cool and efficient this morning; she looked distraught in a contained sort of way. Kerry’s face was almost as pale as Treacle’s, as if she’d had some kind of shock or scare herself.

I said to her, “This is a surprise. What’re you doing here?”

But Treacle didn’t give her a chance to answer; he said, still nattering, “We went to your motel after the sheriff—the sheriffs man called. I wanted to talk to you first, before I see him.”

“who?”

“You were there last night, you almost got killed yourself. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

“That’s what everybody wants to know. The exact cause of the explosion hasn’t been determined yet.”

“But it must have been an accident,” Miss Irwin said. “Fuel leaked into the bilges and some kind of spark set it off—that’s what the radio said. Poor Frank must have forgotten to use the blowers.”

“Maybe.”

“There is some doubt, then?”

“A reasonable amount.”

“Did someone see something, is that it?”

“No. It’s nothing specific.”

Treacle said, “It’s murder, all right. Somebody killed Frank—killed Munroe, too, we were wrong about that. And now I’m—now I’m next in line.”

He’d changed his tune completely. Neither Northern Development nor all that insurance money—at least $200,000 now—appeared to matter much to him anymore; what he was worried about at the moment was his own hide. Or so it seemed. The fear looked genuine enough, but you can’t be sure about things like that. It could all be an act, a smokescreen, designed to divert suspicion from himself.

“They want me dead,” he was saying now, “all those people in Musket Creek. Coleclaw, that son of a bitch, there’s one for sure.” He leaned my way and poked me in the chest with a forefinger. “You were talking to him when we drove in. What were you talking about?”

I resisted an impulse to slap his hand away. Whether he was putting on an act or not, I had finally reached the point where I could dislike him. Actively, if not with any particular malice. I said, “Nothing that concerns you, Mr. Treacle.”

“Why is he here? He didn’t come—come to turn himself in, did he?”

“No. He’s here because of the fight he had with O’Daniel on Friday evening. He knows it makes him look bad—”

“You’re goddamn—damn right it does.”

“But he says he has an alibi for last night. And an alibi for the night of Munroe Randall’s death. If those alibis stand up he’s in the clear.”

“All right, so maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it wasn’t. But somebody out there is a mur—a murderer. And you better find out who he is. You or Telford or
some—somebody. ”

I kept my mouth shut.

“I’m going to demand police protection,” he said. “I’m going to tell—tell Telf—tell Tel
—shit!
Look at me, I’m a nervous—nervous wreck, I can’t even talk straight.”

Miss Irwin took his arm. “We’d better go inside,” she said. He started to resist, but she held on and said in one of those calm, stern voices mothers use on their troublesome kids, “This isn’t doing any of us any good. Come on, now.”

“All right,” he said, “all right.” He let her lead him away about three paces, but then he twisted his head around and said to me, “You just find out who kill—who killed Frank and Munroe, that’s all. You just find out.”

“Sure,” I said to shut him up, “I’ll find out.”

They moved off. Kerry stayed where she was, and when they were out of earshot she said, “I hope Ms. Irwin’s got enough sense to do the driving when they leave. God, he drove like a maniac on the way over here from the motel.”

“Is that why you were so pale when you got out?”

“You’d have been pale too. He almost hit a bus, two pedestrians, and a motorcycle. I thought I was going to wet my pants.”

“What’s she doing with him anyway? It’s Sunday.”

“She lives near him; he stopped and picked her up on the way in. For moral support, I guess.”

“Why did
you
come along?”

“I was bored. And you said you’d be here.” She pulled a rueful face. “But if I’d known he was going to drive like that I’d have walked.”

“You must have seen how upset he is. You could have figured it out from that.”

“We can’t all have great deductive minds like yours, you know,” she said. “Not that I’m incapable of a deduction or two myself. I’d make a pretty good detective if I set my mind to it.”

“Sure you would.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I just said you would. How about if we get out of this heat? My face hurts a little.”

“Poor baby. Maybe you should put some more salve on it.”

“Good idea.”

We went over to my car and got in. Kerry said, “Where to now? Back to the motel?”

“Yup. For the salve, plus I’ve got to call Barney Rivera.”

“And then?”

“Out to Mountain Harbor to return the clothes I borrowed from Tom Decker last night.”

“I’d like to see that place,” she said. “I’ll keep you company.”

I didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t, so I said, “All right,” and started the car.

Barney was home, probably shacked up with a blonde from his office for the weekend; his voice had that satisfied, well-fed tone when he first came on the line. But it didn’t last long. He made a wounded noise when I told him about Frank O’Daniel’s death and started grumbling at me, as if the whole thing was my fault and I was head of a conspiracy to make his life difficult.

I let him get away with that for a time; then I said, “Listen, Barney, there’s a hell of a lot more going on up here than you led me to believe. I can’t help it if things keep happening.”

“Is there any chance it’s murder? Hell, it
must
be murder. I don’t buy that kind of coincidence.”

“Neither do I. But there’s no evidence so far.”

“The directors are going to scream if we have to pay off twice on that goddamn double indemnity clause. What about the surviving partner? Treacle? If he killed them for the money we won’t have to pay him a dime.”

“If he killed them. And if it can be proved.”

“Concentrate on him,” Barney said. “Come down hard on him if you have to. Let’s get this thing resolved fast.”

“Screw you, Barney,” I said.

“What?”

“I’ll call you again when I’ve got something to report,” and I hung up on him just as he began to squawk.

On the way up Highway 5, Kerry and I talked about the two apparently unrelated and accidental deaths; the people who might be involved if the deaths turned out not to be accidental after all. She seemed fascinated, as she often was by my investigations, and her questions and comments were sharp. A very intelligent lady, my lady, even if she did drive me nuts sometimes.

There were more than a few cars on the switchbacked road leading down to Mountain Harbor, and a hell of a lot of people milling around along the lakefront when we got there. Curiosity seekers, drawn by the news of tragedy and sudden death; vultures hunting for scraps of the lurid and the sensational to help sustain their meager lives. What they were feeding on at the moment was the activity of half a dozen men, a couple of them sheriff’s deputies, who were winching the fire-gutted wreckage of the
Kokanee
out of the lake.

Thunder grumbled overhead as Kerry and I made our way to the café-and-store; black and bloated clouds moved restlessly above the high rock walls protecting the harbor. The sound of the winch made a whining, ratchey counterpoint to the thunder, and the two sounds together put little cold skitterings on my back. The water had a dull black shine and looked too-still—like something waiting. I had a clear mental image of the way it had been last night, out there in that black water, swimming through the debris with O’Daniel’s blown-off arm touching my face. And I shivered a little and looked away.

Tom Decker and his wife were both inside the store; I’d expected to find them either there or in their own cabin—somewhere away from that eager crowd outside. I introduced Kerry to them, and returned the bundle of borrowed clothing.

Decker said, “I’ve been giving some thought to what we talked about last night—you know, the possibility that O’Daniel’s boat was deliberately blown up. I still can’t figure a way it could’ve been done, not unless he arranged it himself to commit suicide.”

“I don’t think that’s likely,” I said. “It has to be either an accident or murder.”

“Which way are you leaning?”

“Away from accident. But that’s not based on anything substantial yet.”

“Well, if you’re right,” he said, “it has to have been some sort of rigged-up device, something that would cause the explosion without the killer being on board and without leaving any traces. If somebody else thought of it, one of us ought to be able to think of it too, sooner or later.”

When we went outside again the sheriff’s men had the
Kokanee
winched clear and were getting ready to load it onto a long boat trailer. I drove us away from there without wasting any time. I did not want to look at that dripping, burned-out hulk; I wanted to forget it and last night as quickly as possible, bury them in that shallow mental grave I reserved for the horrors and near-horrors that touched my life.

The first drops of rain began to splatter against the windshield just after we turned onto Highway 5. Within minutes, it was coming down in sheets and the gusty wind that had sprung up with it was strong enough to wobble the car. Lightning slashed and flickered in the vicinity of Mt. Shasta. Thunder kept rumbling, very close, very loud. The day turned so dark it was almost like dusk, and what light remained was a wet, eerie gray, tinged with yellow every now and then from the lightning flashes.

Neither of us said much until we crossed the bridge over Turntable Bay. Then Kerry asked, “Where are we going now?” She sounded a little subdued; I thought it was probably the weather. It made me feel a little subdued myself.

“
We’re
not going anywhere,” I said. “You’re going back to the motel; I’m going to Musket Creek.”

“Oh? And why don’t I get to go there too?”

“Because I’m going to see Paul Robideaux and it might not be a pleasant discussion. Besides which, you coming along yesterday didn’t work out too well.”

“Meaning I got in your way, I suppose.”

“Meaning it might not be safe for you out there.”

“Oh, crap,” she said. “You still won’t admit you handled things badly yesterday, will you?”

“All right, I’ll admit it. But that was yesterday; this is today. And another man died in between. I’m going alone—that’s all there is to it.”

I expected her to give me more argument, the you’re-a-macho-jerk routine again, but she didn’t. “Do what you have to,” she said, and scrunched down on the seat, and sat staring out at the rain. She didn’t have anything else to say on the ride to Sportsman’s Rest, and nothing to say once we got there; she just opened the door and got out of the car and ran for the room.

Another fun evening ahead, I thought gloomily as I U-turned out of the motel lot. Some job. Some vacation. Some soul mate.

It was enough to make you consider misogyny as an alternative lifestyle.