The Zebra-Striped Hearse (23 page)

“Did you ever see a picture of my daughter?”

“Not a good one.”

The picture she showed me was an improvement on Mungan’s, but it wasn’t a good one, either. It looked like what it was, a small-town high-school graduation picture, crudely retouched in color. Dolly smiled and smiled like a painted angel.

“She’s—she was pretty, wasn’t she?”

“Very,” I said.

“You wouldn’t think she’d have to settle for a Bruce Campion. As a matter of fact, she didn’t have to. There were any number of boys around town interested. There used to be a regular caravan out here. Only Dolly wasn’t interested in the boys. She wanted to get out of Citrus for life. Besides, she always went for the older ones. I think sometimes,” she said
quite innocently, “that came from being so fond of her father and all. She never felt at home with boys her own age. The truth is, in a town this size, the
decent
older ones are already married off.”

“Was Dolly friends with some of the other kind?”

“She most certainly was not. Dolly was always a good girl, and leery of bad company. Until that Campion got ahold of her.”

“What about her friends at Tahoe? Were there other men besides Campion in her life?”

“I don’t know what you mean by in her
life
.” Almost roughly, she took the picture of Dolly out of my hands and replaced it on the mantel. With her back still turned, she said across the width of the room: “What are you getting at, mister?”

“I’m trying to find out how Dolly lived before she married Campion. I understand she lost her job and got some help from friends, including Fawn King. You said she wrote you about Fawn. Do you have the letter?”

“No. I didn’t keep it.”

“Did she mention any other friends besides Fawn?”

She came back toward me shaking her head. Her heels made dents in the carpet. “I think I know what you’re getting at. It’s just another one of his dirty lies.”

“Whose lies?”

“Bruce Campion’s lies. He’s full of them. When they were here Christmas, he tried to let on to Jack that he wasn’t the father, that he married her out of the goodness of his heart.”

“Did he say who the father was?”

“Of course he didn’t, because there wasn’t anybody else. I asked Dolly myself, and she said
he
was the father. Then he turned around and admitted it then and there.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he wouldn’t argue, said he made his bargain and he would stick to it. He had his gall, talking about her like she was a piece of merchandise. I told him so, and that was
when he marched her out of the house. He didn’t want her talking any more. He had too much to hide.”

“What are you referring to?”

“His lies, and all his other shenanigans. He was a drinker, and heaven knows what else. Dolly didn’t say much—she never complained—but I could read between the lines. He went through money like it was water—”

I interrupted her. “Did Dolly ever mention a man named Quincy Ralph Simpson?”

“Simpson? No, she never did. What was that name again?”

“Quincy Ralph Simpson.”

“Isn’t that the man they found across the street—the one that was buried in Jim Rowland’s yard?”

“Yes. He was a friend of your daughter’s.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“He was, though. Simpson was the one who introduced her to Campion. After they got married, Simpson gave them a good deal of help, including financial help.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“I’m not trying to make it prove anything. But I’m surprised that Dolly never mentioned Simpson to you.”

“We didn’t keep in close touch. She wasn’t much of a letter writer.”

“When did you see Dolly and Campion last?”

“Christmas. I told you about that.”

“You didn’t see Campion in May?”

“I did not. Jack drove me up there the day they found her, but I shunned
him
like a rattlesnake.”

“And he wasn’t here in Citrus Junction, after the police released him?”

“How would I know? He wouldn’t come to us.”

“He may have, in a sense. He may have been across the road burying Ralph Simpson. Whoever buried Simpson must have had a reason for picking the house across from yours.”

She squinted at me, as if the light had brightened painfully. “I see what you mean.”

“Are you sure Ralph Simpson never came here to your house?”

“There’s no reason he should. We didn’t even know him.” Mrs. Stone was getting restless, twining her hands in her lap.

“But he knew Dolly,” I reminded her. “After she was killed, and you brought the baby here, he may have been watching your house.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It’s been suggested that he was the baby’s father.”

“I don’t believe it.” But after a pause, she said: “What kind of a man
was
Ralph Simpson? All I know about him is what I read in the papers, that he was stabbed and buried in the Rowlands’ yard.”

“I never knew him in life, but I gather he wasn’t a bad man. He was loyal, and generous, and I think he had some courage. He spent his own last days trying to track down Dolly’s murderer.”

“Bruce Campion, you mean?”

“He wasn’t convinced that it was Campion.”

“And you aren’t, either,” she said with her mouth tight.

“No. I’m not.”

Her posture became angular and hostile. I was trying to rob her of her dearest enemy.

“All I can say is, you’re mistaken. I
know
he did it. I can feel it, here.” She laid her hand over her heart.

“We all make mistakes,” I said.

“Yes, and you made more than one. I
know
that Bruce Campion was the baby’s father. Dolly wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Daughters have been known to lie to their mothers.”

“Maybe so. But if this Simpson was the father, why didn’t he marry her? Answer me that.”

“He was already married.”

“Now I
know
you’re wrong. Dolly would never mess with a married man. The one time she did—” Her eyes widened as though she had frightened herself again. She clamped her mouth shut.

“Tell me about the one time Dolly messed with a married man.”

“There was no such time.”

“You said there was.”

“I’m saying there wasn’t. I was thinking about something entirely different. I wouldn’t sully her memory with it, so there.”

I tried to persuade her to tell me more, with no success. Finally I changed the subject.

“This house across the way where Simpson was found buried—I understand it wasn’t occupied at the time.”

“You understand right. The Rowlands moved out the first of the year, and the house was standing empty there for months. It was a crying shame what happened to it and the other condemned houses. Some of the wild kids around were using them to carry on in. Jack used to find the bottles and the beer cans all around. They smashed the windows and everything. I hated to see it, even if it didn’t matter in the long run. The State just tore the houses down anyway.” She seemed to be mourning obscurely over the changes and losses in her own life. “I hated to see them do it to the Jaimet house.”

“The Jaimet house?”

She made a gesture in the direction of the road. “I’m talking about that same house. Jim Rowland bought it from Mrs. Jaimet after her husband died. It was the original Jaimet ranch house. This whole west side of town used to be the Jaimet ranch. But that’s all past history.”

“Tell me about Jim Rowland.”

“There’s nothing much to tell. He’s a good steady man, runs the Union station up the road, and he’s opening another station in town. Jack always swears by Rowland. He says he’s an
honest mechanic, and that’s high praise from Jack.”

“Did Dolly know him?”

“Naturally she knew him. The Rowlands lived across the street for the last three-four years. If you think it went further than that, you’re really off. Jim’s a good family man. Anyway, he sold to the State and moved out the first of the year. He wouldn’t come back and bury a body in his own yard, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I was thinking that you never could tell what murderers would do. Most of them were acting out a fantasy which they couldn’t explain themselves: destroying an unlamented past which seemed to bar them from the brave new world, erasing the fear of death by inflicting death, or burying an old malignant grief where it would sprout and multiply and end by destroying the destroyer.

I thanked Mrs. Stone for her trouble and walked across the road. The earth movers had stopped for the day, but their dust still hung in the air. Through it I could see uprooted trees, houses smashed to rubble and piled in disorderly heaps. I couldn’t tell where Rowland’s house had stood.

T
HE DEPUTY
on duty at the Citrus Junction courthouse was a tired-looking man with his blouse open at the neck and a toothpick in his mouth. A deep nirvanic calm lay over his office. Even the motes at the window moved languidly. The ultimate slowdown of the universe would probably begin in Citrus Junction. Perhaps it already had.

I asked the tired man where Sergeant Leonard was. He regarded me morosely, as if I’d interrupted an important meditation.

“Gone to town on business.”

“Which town?”

“LA.”

“What business?”

He looked me over some more. Perhaps he was estimating my Bertillon measurements. He belonged to the Bertillon era.

“Anything to do with the Simpson case?” I said.

He removed his toothpick from between his teeth and examined it for clues, such as toothmarks. “We don’t discuss official business with the public. You a newspaper fellow?”

“I’m a private detective working with Leonard on the Simpson case.”

He was unimpressed. “I’ll tell the Sergeant when he comes in. What’s your name?”

“S. Holmes.”

He reinserted his toothpick in his mouth and wrote haltingly on a scratch pad. I said: “The ‘S.’ stands for Sherlock.”

He looked up from his laborious pencil work. The old crystal set he was using for a brain received a faint and far-off signal: he was being ribbed.

“What did you say the first name was?”

“Sherlock.”

“That supposed to be funny? Ha ha,” he said.

I started over: “My name is Archer, and Leonard will want to see me. When are you expecting him back?”

“When he gets here.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He tore up the paper he had been writing on and let the pieces flutter down onto the counter between us.

“Can you give me Leonard’s home address?”

“Sure I can. But you’re the great detective. Find it for yourself.”

Archer the wit. Archer the public relations wizard. I took my keen sense of humor and social expertise for a walk down the corridor. There was nobody at the information desk inside the front door, but a thin telephone directory was chained to
the side of the desk. Wesley Leonard lived on Walnut Street. An old man watering the courthouse chrysanthemums told me where Walnut Street was, a few blocks from here. Archer the bloodhound.

It was a middle-middle-class street of stucco cottages dating from the twenties. The lawn in front of Leonard’s cottage was as well kept as a putting green. A stout woman who was not so well kept answered the door.

Pink plastic curlers on her head gave her a grim and defiant expression. She said before I asked: “Wesley’s not here. And I’m busy cooking supper.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“He’s generally home for supper. Wesley likes a good hot supper.”

“What time would that be?”

“Six. We eat an early supper.” Supper was a key word in her vocabulary. “Who shall I tell him?”

“Lew Archer. I’m the detective who brought Vicky Simpson here last Monday night. Is Mrs. Simpson still with you?”

“No. She only stayed the one night.” The woman said in a sudden gush of confidence: “Wesley’s such a good Samaritan, he doesn’t realize. Are you a real good friend of Mrs. Simpson’s?”

“No.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to insult her. She has her troubles. But it’s hard on an older woman having a younger woman in the house. A younger woman with all those troubles, it puts a strain on the marriage.” She ran her fingers over her curlers, as if they were holding the marriage precariously together. “You know how men are.”

“Not Wesley.”

“Yes, Wesley. He’s not immune. No man is.” She looked ready to be disappointed in me at any moment. “Wesley was up half the night letting her cry on his shoulder. Heating milk. Making a grilled cheese sandwich at four
A.M
. He hasn’t made
me a sandwich in ten years. So after she woke up at noon and I gave her her lunch I tactfully suggested that she should try the hotel. Wesley says I acted hardhearted. I say I was only heading off trouble in the marriage.”

“What’s she using for money?”

“Her boss wired her an advance on her wages, and I guess the boys in the courthouse chipped in some. Mrs. Vicky Simpson is comfortably ensconced.”

“Where?”

“The Valencia Hotel, on Main Street.”

It had stood there for forty or fifty years, a three-story cube of bricks that had once been white. Old men in old hats were watching the street through the front window. Their heads turned in unison to follow my progress across the dim lobby. It was so quiet I could hear their necks, or their chairs, creak.

There was nobody on duty at the desk. I punched the handbell. It didn’t work. One of the old men rose from his chair near the window and shuffled past me through a door at the back. He reappeared behind the desk, adjusting a glossy brown toupee which he had substituted for his hat. It settled low on his forehead.

“Yessir?”

“Is Mrs. Simpson in?”

He turned to inspect the bank of pigeonholes behind him. The back of his neck was naked as a plucked chicken’s.

“Yessir. She’s in.”

“Tell her there’s someone who wants to speak to her.”

“No telephone in her room. I guess I could go up and tell her,” he said doubtfully.

“I’ll go. What’s her number?”

“Three-oh-eight on the third floor. But we don’t like gentlemen visitors in a lady’s room.” Somehow his toupee made this remark sound lowbrow and obscene.