Walt said thoughtfully, ‘I reckon I’d better go to the house on Pittsville and meet him.’
‘No,’ I said abruptly.
He looked at me. ‘You’d thought of it?’
‘You are not going anywhere near Matt Clive.’
‘And why not?’
‘You want a split skull or something?’
‘Like webbed feet.’ The smiled hovered. ‘All the same, what is Matt going to do when he arrives at his house and no insurance man turns up? What would you do? Call the company, I guess. And then what? He discovers no one in the company knows anything about him having to come back to the house, and he starts thinking like crazy. And if I were him I’d call the local cops and get them whizzing out to the farm for a look-see. You didn’t see the road there from Kingman. But I did. There are no turnings off it for the last ten miles to the farm. What if you met the cops head on, you and Sam Hengelman and two stolen horses?’
‘He wouldn’t risk calling in cops.’
‘He might reckon that if he was losing everything anyway, he’d make sure you went down as well. And I mean down.’
Every instinct told me not to let Walt meet Matt Clive.
‘Suppose he won’t make a late appointment?’ he said. ‘When I grant most of the company would have gone home, and it would be more difficult to check. Suppose he insists on three in the afternoon, or even the next morning? Do you want to snatch those horses by day?’
‘Not much. But it would take him at least two hours each way. Add an hour for waiting and checking. Even if he called the police, it wouldn’t be for three hours after he left home. We’d have been gone with the horses for two of those.’
Walt obstinately shook his head. ‘The limits are too narrow. A horse van won’t be liable to do better than thirty miles an hour on the farm road, if that much. You have to go into Kingman, which is in the opposite direction from Kentucky, and then round and across Arizona... there aren’t too many roads in that state, it’s mostly desert. The police could find you too easily.’
‘Down through Phoenix...’
‘The road to Phoenix twists through mountains, with hairpin curves most of the way.’
‘I don’t want you walking into an empty house with Matt Clive.’
He looked at me without expression. ‘But you would go. If he didn’t know you, I mean.’
‘That’s different.’
‘How?’ he said, half insulted, half challenging.
I looked at him sideways. ‘I bet I can run faster than you.’
His forehead relaxed. ‘You’re in pretty good shape, I’ll give you that. All the same, I’m going to Las Vegas.’
He’d manoeuvred me into not being able to persuade him against it on the grounds of safety; and from all other points of view it was a good idea. Against my instinct I agreed in the end that he should go.
‘I’ll drift on out tomorrow and look at the farm beyond Kingman,’ I said. ‘I suppose you couldn’t see whether there were any other horses there besides the two we’re after?’
He looked startled. ‘You mean there might be another identification problem?’
‘Perhaps. Though I’d say it’s certain our two have Moviemaker’s and Centigrade’s stud book numbers tattooed inside their mouths. They would have to, to satisfy visiting grooms, for instance, that their mares were being mated with the right stallion. But I’ve never seen them... Showman and Allyx. If there are other horses there, it’ll simply mean going round peering into all their mouths until I find the right ones.’
Walt raised his eyes to heaven. ‘You make everything sound so darned easy. Like it’s only five miles to the top of Everest, and everyone can walk five miles, can’t they?’
Smiling, I asked him for precise directions to the farm, and he told me.
‘And now this end...’ I said. ‘How many strings can you pull with the Los Angeles fraud squad?’
‘Not many,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anyone out there.’
‘But with Buttress Life behind you?’
He sighed. ‘I suppose you want me to go and dip my toes in the water?’
‘Jump right in,’ I agreed. ‘Talk your way to the top chap, and tell him Buttress Life suspect that Moviemaker and Centigrade are Showman and Allyx. Get everything nicely stirred up. Make Offen prove beyond any doubt that the two horses at Orpheus literally are Moviemaker and Centigrade.’
He nodded. ‘OK. I’ll start this morning. Have to go a little carefully, though, or Offen will come up so fast with a libel suit that we’ll wonder what hit us.’
‘You must be used to ducking.’
‘Yeah.’
I gave him the page Miss Britt had written out for me in Lexington.
‘Here are the figures. No one can question these, not even Offen. You might find them useful in getting the law moving.’
He tucked the paper into his pocket and nodded, and shortly after, with the habitual martyred sigh, levered himself out of his chair and ambled on his way.
I sat and thought for a while but got nowhere new. There was going to be little else for me to do but wait and watch for the next few days while Sam Hengelman rolled his way two thousand miles across the continent.
When I went down to lunch I found Eunice and Lynnie sitting in cool bright dresses under the dappled shade of the sea-facing terrace. Their hair was glossy and neat, their big earrings gently swinging, their legs smooth and tanned, the whites of their eyes a detergent white.
They didn’t get the lingering scrutiny they deserved. With them, equally crisp, equally at ease, sat Culham James Offen, Uncle Bark.
All three seemed a scrap disconcerted when I folded myself gently on to the fourth chair round the low table on which stood their long frosted drinks.
Offen and I nodded to each other. There was still in his manner the superior, self-satisfied amusement he had treated me with at his house. Reassuring. Lynnie smiled, but with a quick sidelong glance at Eunice to make sure such treachery hadn’t been noticed. Eunice had on an ‘I-am-your-employer‘s-wife’ face, which didn’t wipe from my mind, nor hers, I imagine, the memory of the fluffy pink wrapper.
‘We thought you’d gone to LA with Walt,’ Lynnie said.
Eunice gave her a sharp glance which she didn’t see. ‘We ran into Mr Offen in the lobby here, wasn’t that extraordinary?’
‘Extraordinary,’ I agreed.
Offen’s white eyebrows went up and down in an embarrassment he couldn’t entirely smother.
‘It sure has been a pleasure,’ he said, ‘to get to know you folks better.’ He spoke exclusively to Eunice, however.
She had warmed again to the charm he had switched on for her, and gave me the tag end of a scornful glance. How could I, she inferred, imagine this nice influential citizen could be a crook.
‘How are Matt and Yola these days?’ I said conversationally.
Offen visibly jumped, and a blight fell on the party. ‘Such charming young people,’ I said benignly, and watched Eunice remembering what had happened to Dave, and also perhaps what Walt had told her about their attack on me. ‘Your nephew and niece, I believe?’
Offen’s pale blue eyes were the least impressive feature in his tanned face with its snow-white frame. I read in them a touch of wariness, and wondered whether in prodding Eunice to face reality I had disturbed his complacency too far.
‘They would sure like to meet you again,’ he said slowly, and the heavy ill-feeling behind the words curdled finally for Eunice his milk-of-human-kindness image.
‘Are you expecting them within the next few days?’ I asked, dropping in the merest touch of anxiety.
He said he wasn’t, and his inner amusement abruptly returned. I had succeeded in convincing him I would be trying to remove his horses from Orpheus pretty soon now; and shortly afterwards he got purposefully to his feet, bent a beaming smile on Eunice, a smaller one on Lynnie and a smug one on me, and made an important exit through the motel.