Rex Stout (21 page)

Delia got another kiss immediately, this time on the cheek—really more of a puff than a kiss, for climbing only the five steps to the porch had been an overdraft on Evelina’s air-conditioning system.

“You look awful, girlie! But here you are! In again, out again! I remember when that fellow, Marbie or Marble I think his name was, when he was in the pen for two years for cheating the Indians, as if anyone could cheat an Indian, he came out as fat as a pig—Hello, Clara. What did I tell you? Didn’t I say Lem would have her out of there before night? I admit that was yesterday, but here she is!”

“Shut up, Eva,” her husband snapped. “I had nothing to do with it. Escott’s partner and Quin Pellett got her out. I was afraid you girls might be in bed. Probably you ought to be. We came over from Amy’s …”

In the front room Delia turned on the lamp by the couch again and they found seats.

“We won’t stay long,” said Sammis brusquely. “I
was coming over from Amy’s to ask you a couple of things, and Eva had to come along to give Dellie a smack.” He reached to pat his wife on the knee with the most predatory hand between Utah and the Sierras. “First you, Clara, what do you want to do about the office?”

“Why …” Clara was a little flustered. “I was fired from the office.”

“No, you weren’t. Didn’t Dellie tell you? I had it in mind some time ago to give up grubstaking, but I’d hate to see that old office closed like the one in front. A thing I said to Dellie, I’d like to put you in charge and run the thing if I could think of something else to do with Dan. Well, somebody thought of something and did it. You’re a smart girl, but you’re a girl and it’s not like it was twenty years ago. With mining what it is, do you think there’s any chance you could make it pay?”

“Why, I think—” Clara was not at ease. “I think so.”

“Say at ninety a week and a third share?”

“I think I could.” Clara suddenly straightened, her chin up, with decision. “But I may as well tell you and get it over with. I’ve about accepted an offer from Wynne Cowles to go into partnership with her.”

An ejaculation came from Delia. Sammis glowered.

“You mean that woman with cat eyes? The one that’s been backing Paul Emery?”

“Yes. She made me an offer about two weeks ago, but I turned it down. Then I got fired. I had an appointment to see her Tuesday afternoon, but she came to the office for me because she’s the kind who does what she pleases, and Jackson saw her there and they started quarreling. I went away and left them. Later I met her and told her I would go in with her. She’ll ante
up to two hundred thousand, and I’ll draw seven thousand a year and get half of the net.”

“You will.” Sammis’s eyes were narrowed. “And you’ll take my men.”

“I suppose I will, as their stakes peter out.” Clara stretched a hand in appeal. “What was I to do? I was fired, wasn’t I?”

“You should have come to Lem, girlie.” Evelina was emphatic. “Everybody should. Everybody does. Come to Lem.”

“I’d been to him enough already. Anyway, I was really glad to get away from Dan Jackson and I wasn’t sorry he had fired me.” Clara turned. “I didn’t tell you, Del, because I didn’t want anyone to know until it was settled. But if I’d told you, you wouldn’t have gone there Tuesday night with that note, and—I’m sorry. I should have told you.” She shifted to Sammis. “I was sorry to be doing anything you wouldn’t like, too, but I couldn’t help it. And the way it is now, since you wanted to get out of the grubstaking business anyway, I’m sure Mrs. Cowles will make a deal to take it over—”

“I don’t like her.” Sammis grunted. “It would be a hell of a note, two women taking over Sammis & Brand. We’ll see. What do you think of it, Eva? Tell me later. I’m tired. You’re right, Eva, I’m tired.” Evelina returned the pat on the knee she had previously received.

Sammis sighed. “We’ll see. We’ll talk it over. I wanted to ask you, Dellie, did you tell Baker that you saw me in Amy’s car Tuesday night there at her house?”

It was Delia’s turn to be flustered, at the unexpectedness of it. She opened her eyes at him. “Why, no. I
couldn’t very well tell him that, because I didn’t see you.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.”

“You didn’t see me and you didn’t tell him you did?”

“That’s right. He asked if I saw you in the car and I told him no, and I said you couldn’t have been there anyway because you were out at the ranch.”

“Well, you were wrong. I wasn’t at the ranch. I was there in Amy’s car.”

Delia stared. “But when I left—I supposed—”

“It don’t pay to suppose, Dellie. When you left the ranch I was starting to eat supper, that’s true. But it was ten o’clock when we drove in at Amy’s. I want to ask you girls a question. Let’s say Amy went to Dan’s office and shot him because he was a polecat and she couldn’t stand it any more. She didn’t, but let’s say she did. Where would you girls—”

“But she couldn’t! Where would she get the gun—”

“I said she didn’t do it, didn’t I? But say she did. Where would you girls stand? You know what Dan Jackson was. Would you want to see her arrested and tried and convicted?”

They gazed at him. Delia said, “I wouldn’t.”

“Neither would I,” Clara agreed.

“I don’t know about this, Lem—”

“Shut up, Eva. I’m not telling anything Baker don’t already know. All right, you girls say you wouldn’t, and I believe you. I believe you because I know you and you’re Charlie Brand’s daughters. Now here’s something Baker does know. Two people have told him that about 9:45 Tuesday evening they saw Amy coming out of the door from the stairs leading to Dan’s office, and they’re right. Dan had told her he was going to the office, and she suspected he wasn’t and had gone there
to see, and had climbed the stairs and found the office dark and quiet, and came away again without going in. That’s the way it happened. Where I came into it don’t matter—anyway, she had phoned me and I met her.”

Sammis set his jaw sidewise, then, after a moment, relaxed it. “Ed Baker wants to question her. He wants to make trouble. He can never in God’s world explain how she got that gun and that handbag, but he might even arrest her and try her. He wants to make the Sammis name stink all over Wyoming. He wants to fasten a motive on Amy by dragging it all out about Dan and his dealings with women. That’s why I asked you girls that question—especially you, Clara. Dan was pretty careful and cagey, and he didn’t leave any trails to speak of—I know, because I was trying to find one and he knew I was. Twenty times I’ve wanted to ask you about telephone calls and messages and letters there in the office, but I couldn’t bring myself to it, turning Charlie Brand’s daughter into a spy on a woman chaser. But Ed Baker won’t be squeamish. He knows you’re the best source of information he can get and maybe the only one. He’s expecting you at his office at ten o’clock. That right?”

Clara nodded. “He is, but—”

“But you don’t know how I knew it. I guess I’ve got one or two friends left up at that courthouse. By the time this is over I’ll have more than Baker has or I won’t have any. Maybe you remember I made him stop questioning you yesterday morning. Even then, when he thought Dellie here had done it, he was starting to get his nose dirty. Now he’s had a talk with the governor and he’s already sunk a pick, and I can’t stop him that way. So I’m making a few motions. It’s important about you, Clara. You must have seen and heard a lot in that office without trying to. I want to ask you, don’t
talk to Baker. Don’t even see him. I’m asking you for me and for Amy. Will you do it?”

Clara said, “All right.”

“Don’t go to see him. If he comes here don’t let him in, and if he gets in don’t talk to him. If he arrests you, phone Harvey Anson right away.”

“But good heavens—what can he arrest me for?”

“As a material witness. That don’t mean anything. The judge will fix a low bail and Anson will have you out in five minutes. Will you do it?”

“Yes.”

Sammis nodded. “I thought you would. You’re good girls. But you want to realize what you’re signing for. If this happens, if he arrests you and you’re released on bail, the county and the whole state are going to buzz. About you. That’s what people are like. But you already know that, even at your age, the way they’ve been buzzing about your dead mother and that preacher Toale. They ought to have their necks wrung, the whole damn caboodle! What won’t they say about Amy or you or anyone if they’ll say that Lucy Brand sneaked down to that cabin with a gun and murdered her husband? I don’t—what’s the matter?”

Delia was on her feet, staring, her mouth hanging open. Clara was gazing at him, also speechless.

He repeated, “What’s the matter?”

“What you said,” Clara gasped. “That they say—”

“That your mother killed your father? Sure they do. Now I’m sorry I mentioned it, I might have known no one would say it to you. But they say it, all right. That she killed him—you might as well have it all if you’ve got some—she killed him because she thought he was carrying on with Amy, which is a lie too, and she took the money off him, and her hiring the detectives was a bluff, and that preacher Toale found it out
somehow, and he worked on her and remorse worked on her until she killed herself. They even say—”

“Shut up, Lem,” Evelina commanded him.

Delia, still staring, was in her chair again, gripping the arms of it. Clara said in a low incredulous tone, “But that—that’s horrible.”

Evelina stood up. “When you’re a fool you’re a good one,” she told her husband disgustedly. “What the hell good would it do to say that even if they had already heard it?” She waddled to Clara and patted her on the shoulder. “Forget it, girlie. There’s more coyotes in the hills than anything else. Come on, Lem. We’ve got to get back to Amy. It’s nearly ten o’clock.”

“I’m not going back to Amy. I’ve got to see—”

“Well, I am, and you’ve got to take me. Come on before you make a bigger fool of yourself.”

Lem halted in front of Clara to ask, “Can I count on you?”

“Yes. You can count on me.”

“Good. I’m sorry if I—holy smoke, I—”

“All right. That’s all right. I’ll let you out.”

Delia didn’t know if she responded to the good nights. She was aware of them in the hall, and of the door opening and closing, and then was aware that her sister was back in the room, standing in front of her.

She looked up. “Well?”

Clara didn’t say anything.

“When Rufus Toale came to see you—these last two weeks—did he say that?”

“No.” Clara turned abruptly and went back to the front hall. In a moment Delia followed. Clara was pulling on a wrap she had taken from the rack.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to see Toale.”

“I’m going, too.”

“No, Sis. No, you’re not.” Clara had the wrap on. “I’m the older. I insist, I beg—you know very well you’re excitable. Please, Sis. I’m just going to find out.” She opened the door. “Please, Del?”

“All right.”

Delia went onto the porch, and called to the form of her sister receding in the dark, “Hurry back!” She stood there until she saw the car turn from the driveway into the street, and then re-entered the house. After she got into the front room she remembered that she hadn’t closed the front door, but that was of such vast unimportance that she didn’t go back to shut it. Instead she flung herself onto the couch, face down, and, not having cried in her jail cell, did so now.

The crying ended after a while; her shoulders stopped shaking and shudders no longer ran over her; but she stayed with her face buried in the cushion. She had thought that she had things pretty well figured out there in her cell, and now here was this. The town where her father had lived and worked, where she and her sister had been born and gone to school and had danced at parties and had given parties at their house—the people of that town were saying that her mother had murdered her father. That finished everything; that was enough—but here she was again, not thinking. She must think about it, and first she must decide in what way it could be thought about.…

When the phone rang she answered it to stop its ringing—and it might be Clara or Ty. But it was someone at the county attorney’s office, asking why Clara wasn’t there. She didn’t know what to say, whether to say that Clara would not go, so she merely told him that she had left the house at twenty minutes to ten. After she had hung up she looked at her watch: ten after. It took only four or five minutes to drive to the
parsonage and Clara might be back soon. She threw herself onto the couch again.

She had promised Ty she would go to bed and try to sleep, and one of the things she had decided in jail was that she would keep all promises, but she wouldn’t go upstairs until Clara returned. There would be no sense in that. Anyway, she had to think. One thing to think about was what to do. She and Clara would go away, would leave Wyoming. There was nothing—there was Ty. What about that? What kind of a feeling was it that he had for her, and what kind did she have for him? Had he heard what people were saying about her mother? If he had, shouldn’t he have told her? Wouldn’t a man in love with a girl tell her a thing like that? …

Was that a car in the driveway, or was it next door? Clara? No, it hadn’t gone on to the garage. Probably next door. Wouldn’t a man in love with a girl? …

The footsteps—now on the steps, now on the porch—were certainly not Clara’s, they were much too heavy. She wouldn’t answer the door no matter how long they rang; she should have turned out the lights. But she had left the door open! The steps were in the hall! She jerked herself up, swinging her feet to the floor, and saw the Reverend Rufus Toale entering the room, his face white, wearing no smirk and displaying no blandness.

R
ufus Toale kept on coming, advancing with a heavy dragging tread. At the big chair in front of the couch, lately occupied by Lem Sammis, he stopped, resting his hand on its back; then he edged around it and lowered himself with ridiculous carefulness onto its seat. Delia started to rise, but her knees wouldn’t take it. She sat and stared.

When he spoke he didn’t begin with “Praise God,” and his voice was as preposterous as his manner of movement had been and his white face still was. Instead of being deep and sonorous and musical, it was little better than a hoarse squeak as he said one word: “Clara?”