The Zebra-Striped Hearse (18 page)

“Why did they fire him?”

“He didn’t tell
me
he was fired. He said he quit because he had what he wanted. Anyway, the family was going back down south.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They closed the lodge and went back to L.A. or wherever they live. Ralph thought they were going to stay longer, but they changed their minds.”

“I mean I don’t understand about Ralph getting what he wanted.”

“Neither do I. You know Ralph, he likes to act mysterious. Ralph Simpson, boy detective. It’s kind of cute.”

“Was Ralph doing some sort of detective work at the Blackwell place?”

“So he said. I don’t always buy a hundred per cent of what Ralph says. He goes to a lot of movies and sometimes he gets them mixed up with the things he does himself.” She added, with an indulgent glance at the paperbacks on the dressing table: “I do the same thing with stories sometimes. It makes life more exciting.”

I brought her back to the subject: “Tell me what Ralph said.”

“I couldn’t—my memory isn’t that good. The way he talked, it was all mixed up with the tragedy that happened to Dolly. That hit Ralph hard. He was very fond of Dolly.”

“Are you talking about the Dolly who married Bruce Campion?”

The force of the question pushed her off the bed away from me. She went to the far side of the room, which wasn’t very far, and stood beside the dressing table in a defensive posture.

“You don’t have to shout at a girl. I have neighbors, remember. The management’s always breathing down my back.”

“I’m sorry, Fawn. The question is important.”

“I bet you’re working on Dolly’s murder, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Was Ralph?”

“I guess he thought he was. But Ralph is no great operator. It’s time somebody with something on the ball did something. Dolly was a sweet kid. She didn’t deserve to die.”

She looked up at the low ceiling, as if Dolly’s epitaph was also a prayer for herself. Tentatively, almost unconsciously, she drifted back across the room, stood over me with eyes like brimming pools.

“It’s a terrible world.”

“There are terrible people in it, anyway. Do you know Bruce Campion?”

“I wouldn’t say I
know
him. Ralph took me out to their place once, when Dolly was living with him.
She
was crazy about him at that time. She followed him around like a little poodle.”

“How did Campion treat her?”

“All right. Actually he didn’t pay too much attention to her. I think he kept her around because he needed a model. He wanted me to model for him, too. I told him I hadn’t sunk that low yet, to pose for dirty pictures.”

“He painted dirty pictures?”

“It sounded like it to me. Dolly said he made her take her clothes off.” Her nostrils flared with righteous indignation. “I only know one good reason a girl should uncover herself in front of a man.”

“Why did Campion marry her if all he wanted was a model?”

“Oh, he wanted more. They always do. Anyway, he had to marry her. He got her pregnant.”

“Did Dolly tell you this?”

“She didn’t have to tell me. I could see it already when Ralph and I were out there.”

“Do you remember when that was?”

“It was along toward the end of last summer, late August or early September. They weren’t married yet, but they were talking about it, at least she was. Ralph brought along a bottle, and we drank a toast to their happiness. It didn’t do much good, did it? She’s dead, and he’s on the run.” She touched my shoulder. “Did he really kill her?”

“All the evidence seems to point to him.”

“Ralph said that isn’t so. He said there was other evidence, but the cops held back on it. He may have been telling the truth, or having one of his movie spells. You never can tell about Ralph, ’specially where one of his friends is concerned.” She drew a deep breath.

“When did Ralph say these things to you?”

Using her hand on my shoulder as a pivot, she sat down beside me. “The last night he was here. We sat up talking, after I got in.”

“Did he tell you what the other evidence was?”

“No. He kept his lips buttoned. The man of mystery.”

“Did he show you anything?”

“No.”

“What did he have with him when he left here?”

“Just the clothes that he stood up in. When he came up here he wasn’t planning to stay, but then he got this job.” She hesitated. “I almost forgot the bundle. He dropped this bundle off with me a day or two before his job folded. I wasn’t supposed to open it, he said. I
felt
it, though. It felt like it had clothes in it.”

“What kind of clothes?”

“I wouldn’t know. It was a great big bundle.” She opened her arms. “I tried to ask Ralph about it, but he wasn’t talking.”

“Was it stolen goods, do you think?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. Ralph’s no thief.”

“What sort of a man is he?”

“I thought you knew him.”

“Not as well as you do.”

She answered after a little thought: “I
like
Ralph. I don’t want to criticize him. He has a lot of good ideas. The trouble is, he never follows through on them. He keeps changing, because he can’t make up his mind what he wants to be. I can remember, when we were kids, Ralph was always talking about how he was going to be a big criminal lawyer. But then he never even made it through high school. It’s been like that all his life.”

“How long has he known Campion?”

“It goes ’way back,” she said. “Ten years or more. I think they were Army buddies in Korea. They did some talking about Korea the day Ralph took me out to the cabin.”

“I’m interested in that cabin. Do you think you could find it again?”

“Now?”

“Now.”

She looked at the leatherette-covered traveling clock on the dressing table. “I have a date. He’s due here any time.”

“Stand him up.”

“I got rent to pay, mister. Anyway, you won’t find Bruce Campion there. He only had the cabin for a while last summer. Somebody lent him the use of it.”

“I still want to see it.”

“Tomorrow. Buy me brunch tomorrow, and I’ll show you where it is. It’s real wild on that side of the lake. Buy some sandwiches and we’ll have a picnic.”

“I like night picnics.”

“But I have a date.”

“How much do you expect to make out of him?”

She frowned. “I don’t think of it that way. They give me money to gamble, that’s their business. Nobody says I have to throw it all away.”

“I’m asking you how much a couple of hours of your time is worth.”

She blinked her innocent eyes. “Twenty?” she said. “And dinner?”

We set out in the rented Ford, along a road which branched north off the highway through thickening timber. Above the broken dark lines of the trees there were almost as many stars as I had seen in Mexico. The night was turning colder, and the girl moved over against me.

“Turn on the heater, will you, mister? I don’t even know your name.”

“Lew Archer.” I switched on the blower.

“That’s a nice name. Is it your real one?”

“Naturally not. My real name is Natty Bumpo.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“It’s a free country.”

“Is there any such person as Natty What’shisname?”

“Bumpo. He’s a character in a book. He was a great rifleman and a great tracker.”

“Are you?”

“I can shoot a rifle but as for tracking, I do my best work in cities.”

“Tracking men?”

“Tracking men.”

She huddled closer. “Do you have a gun?”

“Several, but not with me. I wish I had.”

“Do you think that Campion is hiding out in the cabin?”

“He may be, and he may be dangerous.”

She giggled nervously. “You’re trying to scare me. I thought he was land of a sissy, with that little beret he wears, and all his arty talk.”

“He’s no sissy. He’s something more complicated than that.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s time I told you, Fawn. Dolly isn’t the only one who was killed. Ralph Simpson was icepicked last May, soon after you saw him last. Campion is the prime suspect.”

She had drawn in her breath sharply, and now she was holding it. I could feel her body tighten against my flank. Her breath came out in gusts around her words.

“You must be mistaken. Maybe Bruce Campion did kill Dolly—you never can tell what a man will do to his wife. But he would never do anything like that to Ralph. Ralph idolized him, he thought he was the greatest.”

“How did Campion feel about Ralph?”

“He
liked
him. They got along fine. Ralph was proud to have a real artist for a friend. It was one of the things he wanted to be himself.”

“I’ve known a few artists. They can make difficult friends.”

“But they don’t stick icepicks in people.” For the first time, the full meaning of what I had said struck the girl. I could feel it pass through her body, a shuddering aftershock. “Is Ralph really dead?”

“I saw him in the morgue. I’m sorry, Fawn.”

“Poor Ralph. Now he’ll never make it.”

We rode in silence for a time. She began to cry, almost in-audibly. At one point she said to the moving darkness: “All my friends are dying off. I feel like an old woman.”

I had starred glimpses of the lake between the trees, like polished steel catching the droppings of infinity.

I said when her grief had subsided: “Tell me more about Dolly.”

“What’s to tell?” Her voice was hoarse. “She came up here last spring to get a job. She made change at one of the clubs for a while, but her subtraction wasn’t too hot, so she got herself a man. It’s the same old story.”

“This time the ending was different. Did you know her well?”

“There wasn’t much to know. She was just a country girl from the sticks. I sort of befriended her when she lost her job. Then Ralph introduced her to Campion, and that was that.”

“You said Ralph had a crush on her.”

“I wouldn’t put it that strong. Dolly was a beautiful kid, but he never made a play for her. He just wanted to look after her. She was pretty helpless. She didn’t belong up here.”

“Where did she belong?”

“Let’s see, she told me once where she came from. It was some place down in the orange belt. She used to talk about the orange blossoms.”

“Citrus Junction?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Ralph was murdered in Citrus Junction.”

T
HE CABIN STOOD
on a wooded point which projected into the lake below the road. I left the car at the top of the lane and told Fawn to stay in it, out of sight. She crouched down in the front seat, peering like a frightened bush-bunny over the edge of the door.

I made my way down the rutted dirt lane, walking quietly, like Natty Bumpo. Starshine filtering down between the black conifers hung in the air like the ghost of light. A ramp of solider light slanted from the window of the cabin.

I approached it from the side and looked in. A man who wasn’t Campion was standing in front of the stone fireplace, in which a low fire burned. He was talking to somebody or something.

“Eat it up, Angelo. Enjoy yourself. We’ve got to keep your weight up, old boy.”

Unless there was someone in the shadowed bunks against
the far wall, he seemed to be alone in the room. He was a small man with a dark head and a thin neck like a boy’s. He wore a plaid shirt under a sleeveless red vest.

I saw when he moved that he was holding a young hawk, perched on the knuckles of his gauntleted left hand. The brown bird was tearing with its beak at something red held between the man’s thumb and forefinger.

“Gorge yourself,” he said indulgently. “Daddy wants you to be a big, healthy boy.”

I waited until the bird had finished his red meal. Then I knocked on the door. The small man unlatched it and looked out curiously through rimless spectacles. The hawk’s flecked golden eyes were impassive. I was just another human being.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” I said to both of them. “I was told a man named Bruce Campion lived here at one time.”

His eyes hardened perceptibly behind the glasses. He said in a careful, cultivated voice: “That’s true enough. Last summer before I went to Europe I lent Campion the use of my place. He spent August and part of September here, he told me. Then he got married and moved out.”

“Do you know what happened to him after that?”

“No. I’ve been on my sabbatical, and rather completely out of touch with my friends in this country. I spent the entire year in Europe and the Near East.”

“Campion is a friend of yours?”

“I admire his talent.” He was weighing out his words. “I try to be useful to talent when I can.”

“Have you seen Campion recently?”

The question seemed to disturb him. He looked sideways at the hawk perched on his upright fist, as if the bird might provide an answer or an augury. The bird sat unblinking, its great eyes bright and calm.

“I don’t wish to be rude,” the bird man said. “But I’d certainly feel more comfortable if I knew you had authority to ask me questions.”

“I’m a private detective co-operating with several law-enforcement agencies.” I gave him my name.

“Co-operating in what?”

“The investigation of a pair of murders, possibly three murders.”

He swallowed and grew pale, as though he had swallowed the blood out of his face. “In that case, come in. Don’t mind Michelangelo. He’s completely indifferent to people.”

But the hawk jumped straight up when I entered the room. Held by the leather jesses on its legs, it hung in the air for a moment beating its wings and fanning wind into my face. Then its master thrust his fist up, and the bird returned to its perch.

We sat facing each other with the bird between us.

“I’m Dr. Damis,” he said. “Edmund B. Damis. I teach at Berkeley, in the art department.” He seemed to be marshaling his professional defenses.

“Is that how you happen to know Campion?”

“I met him some years ago, in Chicago. I was a docent at the Art Institute while he was studying there. I admired his painting, as I said, and I’ve kept in touch with him. Or rather he has kept in touch with me.”