He shook his head. It was just some kid, he thought, playing with an old tire. Hurriedly springing up, he walked over and looked down. And there was another one, just the right distance over and more deeply pressed into the mud than the first, every tread distinct. There wasn’t any doubt of it.
But no, he thought, his mind beginning to react now— not a car. A trailer—a boat trailer. But what fool would try to launch a boat here? It would probably go in upside down, and he’d never get the trailer back on the bank.
But maybe, he decided suddenly, whoever put it down there didn’t want it back on the bank. What he needed was a boat and something to sound with. Turning, he ran back to the car and climbed in.
When he got back to Gulfbreeze Camp, Mildred Talley was lying on the float in a fragmentary bathing suit and blue rubber cap. He waved to her as he went inside the cabin after the rod and his tackle box. Locking the door again, he gathered up the oars and went down to the float to pick out a skiff.
“Hello,” she said, raising on one elbow. “How about a cigarette?”
“Sure.” He dropped the gear in a boat and walked over to her. Pretty, he thought, if she’d give her face a chance. Did she expect to swim in all that make-up? She’d poison the fish.
“You close the lunchroom and go out of business?” he asked.
“Delia is up there,” she said. “She’s my sister. Mrs. Skeeter Malone.”
“I see.”
She sat up and took the cigarette, waiting for him to light it. “You just missed your friend.”
He held the match for her. “My friend?”
“Miss Lasater. She just went up the bayou with an outboard.”
“Oh,” he said absently, still thinking about the trailer. The sun was far down against the wall of trees now and he had a long mile to pull with the oars to get back there.
“Maybe you’ll run into her up there. If you go far enough.”
“Is that what she goes up there for? To run into people?”
“I didn’t say that.” She smiled archly. “You did.”
“Maybe she’s painting,” Reno said absently. Why’s she got her harpoon in that black-headed girl? He thought. “It’s impressive country for landscapes.”
“I guess so,” Mildred replied. “Anyway, she spends a lot of time up there. And I’d be the last one in the world to suggest that she was going fishing with Robert Counsel.”
He had been only half listening to her, and the name came slashing into his reverie like a whip. He managed to keep his face still. “Afraid I don’t get you,” he said, puzzled. “Fishing with who?”
She laughed. “I forgot you didn’t come from around here. It was a kind of saying they used to have. Going fishing with Robert Counsel.”
“And not referring to bass fishing, I take it?”
“Not so you could tell it. It meant a girl was up to something she shouldn’t be. Wild parties. That kind of stuff.”
“And who was Robert Counsel?”
“His grandfather used to own all this land around here. The Counselor’s their old house. He lived there with his mother when I was just a kid. And he had a fishing camp or lodge way up the bayou that she didn’t know anything about. I used to hear the older girls talking about it. Ummm, brother!”
“Wonderful what you can do with money,” Reno said.
“It wasn’t only the money. Or the speedboats and the foreign car. He was a smooth job himself. Old family. And good-looking. I used to see him once in a while, but I was just a kid and he never noticed me, of course.”
“And now I suppose he’s married, with three or four kids, an ulcer and a job in the bank?”
She shook her head. “Nobody knows. He’s been gone from here for years. Never did come back after the war.”
“Was he killed overseas?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She stopped and was silent for a moment, gazing out abstractedly over the water. “Somebody who’s well known like that, you hear all kinds of stories about him. You know how it is. He was blinded. He was court-martialed for some silly thing. He lost both legs. A lot of people didn’t like him, anyway. And a few of them hated him, I guess. Like Max Easter.”
“Easter? Oh, the big guy. He hated him?”
She nodded. “Robert Counsel ran away with his wife. Or so they think.” She broke off abruptly. “But I’m keeping you from your fishing.”
So Easter hated him, Reno thought, pulling up the bayou with long strokes of the oars. Maybe he had a lot of enemies around here. Maybe that was the reason he was trying to get in here without anyone’s recognizing him. But why the boat? He swore under his breath and yanked savagely at the oars. I could stop that, he thought irritably. If I want to beat my brains out, why don’t I just wonder what he was doing with a vacuum pump?
The sun was gone from the water by the time he rounded the last bend and the long reach of the bayou stretched out dark and tranquil ahead of the skiff. He pulled over against the shore and began watching, knowing he was close. It was even darker under the trees, but in a few minutes he made out an open space that looked like the camp ground. Easing the boat up against the bank, he located the tire marks just under the surface of the water. Now, he thought.
Pulling a short distance straight out from shore, he let the boat come to rest on the mirror-like surface and set up the casting outfit, tying on a heavy spoon with a treble hook. The first two casts were unproductive. Maybe the water was a little deeper than it looked, he decided. The next time he let the spoon sink until he was sure it was on the bottom before he started his retrieve. This time he hit it. He felt the spoon bump something, hang up for an instant, and jerk free. Casting back to the same place, he hooked it solidly.
Not brush or weeds, he thought, feeling the excitement now. It was too rigid. Slowly he began winding the reel, pulling the boat back over the spot. When the line led straight down into the darkening water he lay flat on the stern of the boat and poked around with the rod tip. It encountered nothing. Still deeper, he thought. Hurriedly slipping the reel off its seat so it wouldn’t get wet, he stretched farther out over the stern, putting his head into the water and extending the full length of his arm and the five-foot tubular steel casting rod. He felt it then. The rod tapped something below him and the sound was unmistakably that of metal against metal. Swinging the rod back and forth, he heard it scrape against steel for two or three feet before he lost contact. He knew what it was—the pipe frame of a boat trailer, the shaft between axle and trailer hitch.
He raised his head and let water run out of his hair while he took a deep breath and considered his find with growing elation. It had to be Conway’s trailer. Nobody else would deliberately push into the bayou something that probably cost well over a hundred dollars, and it proved beyond any doubt that Conway had been up to more than a simple fishing trip.
But what next? He’d have to get a rope to haul it out where he could get a look at it. That was what he would do—go to town in the morning, pick up a piece of light line, and come back here with the boat. It would be easy to swim down and make the line fast to it, go ashore with the other end, and haul it up. Maybe there was some clue. . . . Maybe Conway was on it.
Looking up, he turned his head to estimate the distance from the bank and fix the spot exactly. It was about thirty feet straight out from the tire marks. It was then he saw the boat.
He sat up, startled. It was Patricia Lasater in a skiff less than fifty yards away, pulling down the channel on the oars and looking over her shoulder at him. He had been so intent on his activity he hadn’t heard her. But why hadn’t she been using the motor he could see on the stern of her boat?
She stopped rowing and the skiff came to rest alongside his. He looked across at her and nodded, busy putting the reel back on the rod and conscious of the water dripping out of his hair onto his clothing.