The brown eyes regarded him with faint irony. “A new method of stalking bass?” she asked.
“No,” he said shortly. “Hung up on some brush. I was trying to work the spoon loose.”
“Oh.” She smiled delightfully, looking very cool and attractive in the blouse and crisp white slacks. “I was afraid you were going to drown. You looked for all the world like a feeding duck.”
Reno was conscious of the baffled irritation of all males caught in something ridiculous by a pretty girl. “Is your motor broken down?” he asked stiffly.
She shook her head. “It’s all right. I was just rowing because I like the bayou at dusk and wasn’t in any hurry.”
That’s possible, he reflected grudgingly. After all, she shouldn’t have any reason to suspect what was down there. He was becoming suspicious of everybody. “Have you been sketching?” he asked, nodding toward the old brief case in the stern of the, boat. “The girl at the camp tells me you paint.”
“A little.”
“Oils?” “
She nodded. “I teach it at college.”
“Have you been here long?”
“About two months. Did you get your plug loose?”
“No. It’s useless.” He reeled in the rest of the line and yanked straight back through the guides. The line parted. “It’s time to start back, anyway.”
She glanced around at the deepening twilight. “Pass me your anchor rope and I’ll give you a tow with the motor.”
* * *
He was up early the next morning, out on the bayou working the shore line with a bass plug. Since he was supposed to be here for the fishing, he had to make it look good. At eight o’clock he changed clothes and went into Waynesport to buy the line. He thought of going to see Howell Gage, but decided to wait until after he had the trailer out. There might be something really important to tell him after he’d had a look at it.
When he got back to camp he remembered he hadn’t bought cigarettes while in town. He walked around to the lunchroom. It was empty, but just as he stepped inside he heard the low sound of voices out in the store.
A woman said something he didn’t catch, and then there was the deadly monotone of Skeeter’s voice. “I tell you she talks too damned much. If you can’t shut her big mouth, I can—” It chopped off abruptly as Reno let the door close.
A woman he hadn’t seen before came through the doorway at the end of the counter. Delia, he thought; Mrs. Skeeter. She was an older version of Mildred, faded a little, and coldly intelligent rather than petulant.
“Yes?” she said.
“Package of cigarettes,” Reno replied. Tough baby, he thought. I wonder if Mac talked to her.
He went back to the cabin. Picking up the tackle box and rod, he got the coil of rope out of the car and went down to the float. He put the rope under the stern seat and shoved off, and as he swung to look up the channel a flash of movement caught his eye. Swinging quickly back, he looked again, and saw it was Patricia Lasater in her skiff, going slowly along the opposite shore near the first turn. When he rounded the turn, some two hundred yards ahead, he looked again. She was nowhere in sight. The whole stretch of the bayou to the next bend was empty.
That was odd. She couldn’t have gone ashore; her boat would still be along the bank somewhere. And she certainly couldn’t have reached the next bend; that was at least a quarter mile away. Then he remembered. There was another of the innumerable arms of the bayou branching off along here somewhere. He had seen it last night. When he pulled abreast of it he saw her. She had just beached her skiff not fifty yards away, inside the entrance, and was climbing out. He suddenly ceased pulling at the oars, and stared in amazement at the man who had just stepped out of the timber along the shore.
He was one of the largest men Reno had ever seen, a gray haired giant whose shoulders had the solid, wedge-shaped look of power and who towered over the girl as if she were a child. He carried a rifle in the crook of his arm and made no effort to help her as she climbed the bank. While Reno watched, they turned and started into the timber, the big man in the lead. Easter, he thought, remembering Mildred Talley' description. There couldn’t be two people that size around here. A screwball of some kind, she had said. Just what had she meant by that? Probably, he reflected cynically, anybody who doesn’t chew gum. But why had Patricia Lasater met him up here, and where were they going? , He shrugged, and dug in the oars. There was no use guessing, and he had more important business. There shouldn’t be any interruptions this time.
When he arrived at the spot some twenty minutes later he set up the casting rod again, without the reel, and carefully lined up the tire marks in the mud. Lying flat in the stern, he began swinging the rod back and forth below him as he had yesterday. The rod encountered nothing, and after a minute or so of futile search he raised his head, taking another bearing on the tracks. The boat had drifted over a little.
He moved it slightly, using one oar as a paddle, and tried again. Still he met with no success. With vague irritation he raised his head and looked around, thinking he would have to drop anchor anyway to hold the boat still. But no, it was where he had put it.
Nuts, he thought impatiently, why waste time probing for it? He had to dive anyway. Stepping forward, he dropped the anchor overboard, then looked up and down the desolate stretch of bayou. There was no one in sight. Stripping off his clothes and watch, he dropped quickly over the side. He took a deep breath and let go the gunwale, swimming straight down. The water was only some ten feet deep, and almost immediately he felt the soft mud bottom under his hands. Moving slowly then, in a widening circle, he put out his arms to keep from bumping the wheels or axle with his head. He had a bad moment when the thought occurred to him again that Conway might be tied to the trailer, but with quick revulsion he shoved it out of his mind. Once his hand brushed something and he thought he had found it, but it was only the concrete block of the anchor. When his lungs began to hurt he kicked upward and took another breath as his head broke the surface. I couldn’t have been that far off in my bearings, he thought angrily. It’s got to be right here under me.
The truth began to come home to him then. The next dive settled it. Lying on the bottom in the warm, tea-colored water with his hands probing into one of the holes in the mud where the wheels had settled, he knew the answer.
There had been a trailer, or something, here last night, but it wasn’t here any more. Somebody had moved it.
Eight
He climbed back into the boat and dressed, and stared coldly out across the bayou as he thought of Patricia Lasater. So she’d just happened to come along, the way she’d just happened to be with Mac the night he was killed. He cursed, and sculled the boat over against the bank to find the tracks where it had been pulled out. Then he sat and stared. There weren’t any.
The old tracks were still there, but after he’d covered a hundred yards in each direction he knew the trailer had not been pulled up on the bank. It had been moved by boat. But how? None of the skiffs at the camp would support it, even the submerged weight of it. And when he stopped to think of it, how could she have moved it anyway? It would have taken a powerful man to lift that trailer far enough off the bottom to tow it. Well, she knew a powerful man, didn’t she? She was with him right now.
Back at the camp he took a shower, changed into white slacks and a T shirt, and drove back to Waynesport. Howell Gage was prowling the office, dictating to a pretty brunette. When they were finished, Reno went in and sat down.
“Who’s Robert Counsel?” he asked abruptly.