“You sound as if you made a study of them.”
“Father did,” she said surprisingly. “He was deeply concerned about Anne and her family, and he discussed it with me. He was judge of the Juvenile Court as well as Superior Court, and he had the disposition of the case. He had to decide what was to be done with Anne after it happened.”
“What did happen?”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Her father assaulted her.”
“Do you mean what I think you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Why isn’t Meyer in San Quentin?”
“She wouldn’t testify against him in court. Of course she was the only witness, so they had no case. But they did have enough to take her away from him, out of his house. Father intended to put her in a foster home, but it turned out not to be necessary. Brandon married her sister – he was Juvenile Officer in those days – and the two of them took her in. She lived with them for several years, and it seems to have worked out. There was no more trouble with Anne, no more legal trouble anyway.”
“Until now.”
She twisted suddenly in the seat and looked up the lane toward the hidden cabin. Her half-turned body made a breathtaking line against the light.
“Won’t you come up to the cabin with me?”
“What for?”
“I want to see what sort of condition it’s in. I intend to sell it.”
“You better stay out of there.”
“Why? Is her body–?”
“Nothing like that. You simply wouldn’t like it in there. In fact you’d better give me back the keys.”
“I don’t understand why.” But she took the keyring out of her black suede bag and handed it to me. “What do you want them for?”
“I’ll turn them over to the authorities if I can find an honest cop in Las Cruces. You should know some honest cops, if your father was a judge.”
“I thought Brandon was one. I still believe he is, when he’s himself.” She bit her lip. “Why don’t you go to Sam Westmore?”
“The District Attorney?”
“Yes. Sam and Marion are my oldest friends. You can rely on Sam Westmore.” But she was holding onto the door handle again, as if she needed it to anchor her to reality. “Is it safe, though, for you to go back to the city?”
“I don’t know if it’s safe. It should be interesting.”
She said in a small, clear voice: “You’re a brave man, aren’t you?”
“Not brave. Merely stubborn. I don’t like to see the jerks and hustlers get away with too much. Or they might take over entirely.”
“You won’t let them, will you?”
Her voice was dreamy, almost childish. Her gentian eyes were wide and dewy. They closed. I took her head between my hands and kissed her mouth.
Her hat fell off, but she didn’t try to retrieve it. Her head rested on my shoulder like a ruffled golden bird. Her breast leaned on me, and I could feel the quickened movement of her breathing.
“You’ll stop them,” she said.
“If they don’t stop me first, Katie.”
“How did you know my name was Katie? Nobody’s called me Katie for a long time.”
I didn’t answer. An explanation would only spoil the moment.
It ended anyway. She stiffened and drew back. When I tried to reach her mouth again, she turned her head away.
“God,” she said harshly. “I need a keeper, don’t I? I warned you not to be sympathetic to me. I’m ready to weep on any shoulder that offers itself.”
The red convertible followed me down the mountain. I kept remembering the taste of her mouth.
Chapter 19
I found Meyer in a cubicle in the corner of his warehouse, sitting idle at an invoice-strewn desk. He looked at my face as if the sight of it hurt his red-rimmed eyeballs.
“What happened to you?”
“I cut myself shaving.”
“What were you using, a power mower? I was commencing to think you ran out on me. Which maybe you should of at that. Brand wants me to take you off the case.”
“So?”
“So nothing. I don’t take orders from any young snot-nose that I helped to put in the courthouse with my good money.” Meyer leaned forward on his arms, his face like the graying mask of an old fox. “Only I wouldn’t do anything more to cross him if I was you. Brand is a bad one to cross.”
“I don’t take it so well myself.”
“Maybe not.” He squinted ironically at my damaged face. “But you’re not sheriff. Now where you been?”
“Lake Perdida.”
“Why go traipsing off there? I been trying to contact you all day, and I’m not the only one. The D. A. wants to see you. While you’ve been pooping off around the countryside, this case has been breaking open. You know the Buick that got left at the airbase–”
“I ought to. I was the one who reported it.”
“Anyway, they traced it to a car-dealer in Los Angeles. This redhead – what’s his name?”
“Bozey.”
“This Bozey bought it off a used-car lot around the first of September. He paid cash for it, a five-hundred-dollar bill and some smaller bills. When the dealer tried to deposit the money in his bank, the cashier caught it.”
“Hot?”
“It scorched his fingers. The money was part of the loot from a bank in Portland that got robbed last August. The bank in L. A. had a circular from the Oregon police listing the numbers of the bills. It was a big haul, over twenty thousand bucks altogether.”
“Bozey took a bank for twenty grand?”
Meyer nodded his shaggy head. “There’s a two-thousand-dollar reward out for the redhead. That should keep you on the ball. If anything will. What sent you up to the lake, for God’s sake? Maybe you thought you’d get in a little fishing on my time?”
I almost walked out on him. One thing kept me: I needed more time with Meyer.
“Call it fishing. I caught something.” I laid the scuffed brown heel on the desk. “Does this belong to your daughter Anne?”
He turned it over in his fingers, gently, as if it possessed a feminine sensitivity. “I wouldn’t know if it’s Annie’s or not. I never paid much attention to what a woman wears. Where did it come from?”
I told him.
“That don’t sound so good for Annie.” He rolled the heel on the desk like a misshapen dice. “What do you make of it?”
I leaned on a bookkeeper’s stool against the wall and lit a cigarette. “I have a hunch that she was digging a grave. It could have been intended for her, or somebody eke.”
“Who else? Kerrigan?”
“Not Kerrigan. He was superintending the job.”
“It don’t make sense to me. Are you sure it was Annie with him?”
“I have a couple of witnesses. Neither of them made a positive identification, but I think they’re just being cautious. If this heel is hers, it clinches it.”
He picked it up from the litter on the desk, and scratched his stubby chin with the exposed nails. The sound rasped on my nerve-ends.
“Hilda would know, maybe.”
He reached for the telephone and dialed a number. On the plywood wall behind his head the end of an old motto protruded from under a bright new girlie calendar: I married a woman. But that came to an end. Get a good dog, boys, He will be your friend.
Meyer spoke into the mouthpiece: “Hello, Brand, is Hilda around?”
The telephone squawked negatively.
“Know where she is?”
The sheriff’s voice was denatured by its passage through the wires, but recognizable: “No. I don’t.” His voice sank, and I missed the rest of what he said.
Meyer listened with a lengthening face. “Well, what do you know about that? Personally I think she’s making a big mistake, and I’ll tell her that if I see her.” He dropped the receiver. “Brand says she’s gone and left him. Packed her clothes and moved out.”