“Dowling only had to put poison in the powdered milk and then leave on a business trip, where he’d have an alibi for every minute of the time. The picnic case, you see, was never used except when he was gone, and only his wife used the powdered milk.
“You should have heard Sheriff Eldon questioning Dowling. He soon had him floundering around in a mass of contradictory stories.
“He’d learned Bay was on his trail and decided to kill Bay so it would look as though Howard had done it. He knew Howard’s term had expired but didn’t know Howard had been rearrested and was in jail. Dowling had had his tent placed so the back was right up against that pine thicket. He’d pretend to be asleep, but he’d taken the pegs out of the back and he’d carry a change of shoes and prowl along the mountain trails. I guess he was pretty desperate, after getting all that wealth together, to be trapped by an old crime. He tried to frame it on you, of course, stealing your gun, then later even planting some of your cigarette stubs. He buried the things from his victim’s pockets at your place where officers would be sure to find them. But because he thought Sheriff Eldon was a doddering old man, he overdid everything.
“Well, that’s all the news, and I must skip. I’m supposed to be back in the main trail in ten minutes. The others are going to pick me up on the way out. I thought I’d just stop by and — leave you my address. I suddenly realized I hadn’t told you where you could reach me.”
She was standing in the door of the cabin, smiling, looking trim and neat in her leather riding skirt, cowboy boots and soft green silk blouse.
Frank Ames strode toward her, kicking a chair out of his way. “I know where to reach you,” he said.
Five minutes later she pushed herself gently back from his arms and said, “Heavens, I’ll be late! I won’t know how to catch up with them. I don’t know the trails.”
Ames’ circling arms held her to him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You have just left lipstick smears all over one of the best guides in the mountains.”
“You mean we can catch up with the others?” she asked.
“Eventually,” Frank Ames said. “You probably don’t know it, however, but you’re headed for the County Clerk’s office.”
“The County Clerk’s office? Surely you don’t mean—?”
“I’m leaving just as soon as I can get a few things together,” he said. “You see, I want to record a claim. Up here in the mountains when we find something good, we file on it.”
“You — you’d better have it assayed first, Frank.”
“I’ve assayed ‘it,’ ” he said. “Underneath that raspberry lipstick there’s pure gold, and I don’t want anyone to jump my claim.”
“They won’t,” she assured him softly.
Barbara Callahan
The Pinwheel Dream
Sometimes I wish I could trade my recurring dream with someone. My dream is like a kaleidoscope, very colorful, almost pretty. I would be glad to accept a black and white dream in return for my living-color one. I would even accept a horror dream, a terrible one in which the sleeper is chased up and down cliffs, by a mad dog. Any dream would be better than mine. My dream focuses on a pinwheel, a child’s toy, a stick on which bits of plastic are pinned to be set into motion by the wind.
My pinwheel is red, white, and blue. In my dream I spin it with my finger. As soon as my finger touches it, the colors change into black and white polka dots. Then the polka dots dissolve into a solid purple. Then the purple turns to red. After redness floods the dream I wake up.
It’s such an innocent-looking dream but after I’ve dreamed it a few nights, I make those awful phone calls. I don’t pick names randomly from the phone book. I call the relatives or friends of people who work in the same office I do.
When Ellen, the stenographer, stopped after work at the bar on the first floor of our building with John, the engineer, I was compelled to call her husband. I had overheard Ellen telling her husband on the phone that she had to work late. I knew she was lying. After John and Ellen left the office, I took the next elevator downstairs and saw them through the open door of the bar. They were sitting close together in a booth.
I hurried to a pay phone in the drug store, pulled out my address book, and called Ellen’s husband.
“I think you should know,” I told him, “that your wife is having a drink in Richard’s Bar with a man she works with. They’re there right now.”
I hung up before he could say anything.
Ellen’s eyes looked terribly red the following morning. She told everyone that her allergies were acting up. I knew differently. I knew she must have spent the entire evening in tears because after my call to her husband I went back to the lobby of our building and sat in a chair with a newspaper opened out to conceal my face. I lowered it to see Ellen pulled roughly out of the bar by her husband.
She looked so pathetic that I felt a little guilty. I brought coffee to her desk. She thanked me before pouring out the story of her humiliating exit from the bar.
“I have to tell someone, Lorna,” she sobbed, “and you’re so good, such a good person, I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, Ellen,” I replied.
“I don’t know how he found out. He must have been suspicious about all the overtime that didn’t appear on my paycheck.”
“You won’t do it again, dear? Promise Lorna.”
“I promise,” she said like a repentant child.
I went back to my desk and opened my ledgers. I’m a bookkeeper and my books are a work of art. They are neat and orderly, just as life should be but isn’t, unless a person steps in at the right moment to see that life balances out properly. I smiled down at the figures in the books. Ellen’s life was balanced. She had erred and been punished for it.
A simple phone call from Lorna, good old Lorna, the office’s maiden aunt, everybody’s friend and confidante, had straightened her out. And good old Lorna could continue her behind-the-scenes accounting like an invisible but efficient guardian angel. Ellen’s husband had not mentioned the phone call to her. Telling her would have destroyed the image of omniscience he needed to keep Ellen in line in the future.
After the incident with Ellen, I looked forward to my pinwheel dream. I seemed to derive courage from it, the courage to do the necessary calling. So much time and energy in our office seemed to be devoted to perpetrating deceptions that I felt our business motto should be “Deception is our most important product.”
After dreaming the pinwheel dream for five nights, I called Harry’s wife to tell her that Harry had gone to the race track one afternoon. Harry belongs to Gamblers Anonymous and he shouldn’t go to the track. I had heard Harry telling his wife on the phone that he had to meet a client in the afternoon, but I saw the racing forms on his desk when I brought him a doughnut and coffee. Deception, deception!
Harry was red-faced when he asked Payroll to mail his check home each week instead of giving it to him. Like Ellen’s husband, his wife must not have told him about the anonymous call.
The pinwheel dream receded from the proscenium of my sleep for nearly a month after my call to Harry’s wife. I was grateful. The forces set into motion by the dream caused me elation, I do admit that, but they also caused me some anxiety. If I were discovered, I would no longer be “good old Lorna” to my associates. Stripped of that title, I would have lost access to the deceptions that proliferated in our office like fruit flies.
The new employee, Paul Mason, forced me to summon the dream from the wings where it always lurked. At first Paul puzzled me; then he angered me. He not only refused to confide in me but he refused to make self-incriminating phone calls in my hearing. Yet I knew his poker face and formal mannerisms masked a deception more evil than anyone’s. Paul became my greatest challenge. I brought coffee and discussed the weather more times with him than I had ever done with a new employee. My efforts at conversations yielded only polite responses.