“You’re sure?”
“Perfectly sure. I know Brandon.”
“And you’re fond of him?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m fond of him. I wonder if anyone is. I do admire him for what he’s done. I respect his integrity.”
“What has he done?”
“He came up from near the bottom, as you said. He’s made himself the best sheriff we’ve ever had in this county. And I’ve known the others,” she added. “Father was a Superior Court judge.”
“Did your husband have anything to say about his brawl with Church?”
“It wasn’t a brawl. They simply argued. No, Don wouldn’t tell me anything. It’s understandable, if he was involved in the crime as you say he was.”
“He was.”
“I don’t understand how you can be so certain.”
“I talked to the Summer girl tonight. She didn’t know who I was, for a while anyway, and she said more than she intended to. She and your husband and a man named Bozey were all involved in the highjacking. You may have seen this Bozey with your husband – a young hood with red hair, eyes like a rabid dog. He wears a leather jacket like a pilot’s jacket.”
“No, I never saw him.” But the description seemed to make the situation actual to her, perhaps for the first time. “It can’t be true! Don was at the court with me yesterday.”
“All day?”
“Most of the afternoon. He came out after lunch to work on the books. Then he started drinking in the office. He’s been drinking a great deal lately.”
“Are you sure he didn’t leave the office?”
“As sure as I can be. I didn’t sit and watch him, naturally. But I’m absolutely certain he had nothing to do with that shooting.”
“He had plenty to do with it, Mrs. Kerrigan. Whether or not he was there in person, he was one of those responsible.”
“You mean that Don planned a cold-blooded murder, for gain?”
“I’m pretty sure he planned the highjacking. The murder was part of it. The two crimes can’t be separated, so far as I can see.”
She said with a kind of awe: “I had no idea. I knew that he was in trouble, I didn’t realize how serious it was. He should have told me,” she whispered to herself. “He could have had the house. Or anything.”
I broke in on heir self-recriminations: “There seems to be more to this case than murder for gain. Your husband’s death throws the whole thing wide open.”
“I thought you said that the girl – Jo Summer–”
“She’s the logical suspect, of course. But I don’t know. They were set to go away together. She was in love with him.”
“In love with him?”
“In her way. In love with him and the easy life he promised her. They were going to Guatemala and live happily ever after.”
“How can you know that?” Her face was a mask of pain.
“She told me herself. She wasn’t lying. She may have been dreaming, but she wasn’t lying. That wasn’t the only interesting thing she said. It got a little involved, but the idea was that Anne Meyer had something to do with the highjacking. Tony Aquista told her a story about Anne Meyer which changed the original plan.”
“What kind of a story?”
“I was hoping that you could tell me, Mrs. Kerrigan. I never got the story. The girl got suspicious and ran out on me.”
Her eyes widened. Their dark blue depths were bottomless. She said slowly and carefully: “Why should you suppose that I would know anything about Anne Meyer?”
“You said quite a lot about her at the motor court, before we were interrupted. You wanted her found and shadowed, remember?”
“I’d prefer to forget it. I was almost crazy with jealousy. It’s over now. Everything’s over now. There’s nothing left to be jealous of.”
“Do you mean that something has happened to her?”
“I mean that my husband is dead. You can’t be jealous of a dead man, can you? I was on the wrong track, anyway. She wasn’t the one after all.”
”She was at one time, you said.”
“Yes, but it was finished. I was misled by something that happened last Friday. Don offered her the use of our place in the mountains for the weekend. She came here to pick up the keys, and I overheard the – transaction.” Her voice took on a cutting edge: “He had no right to do it. The cabin belongs to me. I guess that’s what upset me.”
“Where is the cabin?”
“On Lake Perdida. Father built it over twenty years ago, when they first put in the dam.”
“Could the woman still be there?”
“I don’t believe so. Don said not. When she failed to come to work on Monday, he drove up to the lake to see what was keeping her. But she was gone when he got there. At least, so he said.”
“His story should be checked. Is there a telephone in the cabin?”
“No, there are no private telephones in the settlement. It’s rather isolated.”
“I’d like your permission to go up and make a search for her.”
“Of course. If you think it will do any good.”
“How do I get there?”
She gave me detailed instructions. The lake was on the western slope of the Sierra, about two hours of mountain driving from Las Cruces. “I’ll get you the keys.”
“Duplicates?”
“No, there’s only the one set.”
“Then she brought them back?”
“Don did, Monday night. Apparently she left them there.”
“Was he gone all day Monday?”
“Yes, he was. He didn’t come home until long past midnight.”
“But he hadn’t seen her?”
“He said he hadn’t.”
“Do you think he was telling the truth?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “I lost track of Don years ago. No, I didn’t ask him what he’d been doing all day.”
“What do you think he was doing?”
“I have no idea.”
She left the room and came back a minute later, with two Yale keys and some smaller padlock keys clinking on a chrome ring. “There you are. Good luck.”
I said: “It might improve my luck if you don’t mention this to anyone. Especially anyone official.”
“Brandon Church, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been having trouble with him, too?”
“That’s an understatement. Church hates my insides. He seemed like a reasonable sort when I first met him, and we were getting along. Then the whole thing went to pieces. He’s a friend of yours. What’s on his mind?”
“I don’t pretend to understand him. I know that he’s a good man. Father thought very highly of him.” She managed a wan smile. “Could you be partly to blame for the trouble between you?”
“I usually am, I guess.”
“Perhaps he resents an outsider horning in. Brandon takes his work very seriously. Don’t worry, I won’t say a word to him about you.” She offered me her hand. “I do trust you, you see. I don’t know exactly why I should–”
“Because you can. I wish you well. But I wouldn’t go around trusting people indiscriminately.”
“You mean Brandon again, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid so. A good man who goes sour–” I didn’t complete the sentence.
A high-powered engine was whining up the hill. It stopped in front of the house. Kate Kerrigan went to the window.
“Speak of the devil.”
I looked out over her shoulder. Church climbed out of his black Mercury and started up the concrete steps from the street. Braga toiled along behind him like a fat Indian wife. I went out the back door as they came in the front.
I drove east toward the phantom mountains. When I was a few miles outside the city limits, something broke like a capsule behind my eyes. It leaked darkness through my brain and numbness through my body. I stopped the car on the shoulder of the road. Somewhere in the hills to the southwest, the Cyclops eye of the air beacon still scanned the starless sky. I wished that I was made of steel and powered by electricity.