At the foot of the hill I turned into the driveway of the cottage and parked, went up to the door and pressed the bell. Musical chimes made an obscene noise in the stillness. When no one answered, I pressed again. And again.
The door opened a foot, disclosing nothing. A tight, hard voice said, “I’ve got a ’forty-five trained on your guts, buddy. Step inside, and when you’re in put your hands up.”
I followed instructions and the door slammed behind me. It was completely dark inside. The voice told me to turn around and face the door. I did, there was a sharp click and the room filled with light. From behind he frisked me with his left hand, prodding my kidneys with the nose of the ’forty-five in his right.
As he unbuttoned my left hip pocket and dug for my wallet I spun quickly, hammering my right fist down on his gun wrist. The ’forty-five thumped to the floor and I hit him hard on the side of his head with a left. He staggered back and I caught him flush on the chin with a right hand, sending him across the room. He tripped over a footstool and fell into an armchair in the corner. I retrieved the gun and held it on him.
“Stay in the chair, Donaldson.” I took out my wallet and threw it at him. He shook his head, glared at me when his eyes focused and began to examine the contents of the wallet. I seated myself in a curved sectional sofa in the center of the room, facing him.
Robert Donaldson was about thirty five, slightly under six feet tall, with plenty of well placed meat on him. He had wavy dark brown hair, cobalt blue eyes and sharp dark skinned features. His lips were set in a grim line as he studied my credentials.
“So what?” Donaldson flipped the wallet to me. “Have they figured a legal way to murder me?”
“Has who?”
Donaldson laughed flatly. “Don’t you know? Are we going to play games?” He took a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket and lit it. He frowned angrily at the ’forty-five in my hand, then his expression changed to perplexity. He asked, “Why aren’t you carrying a gun?”
“Your ex-wife hired me to find you, Donaldson. I had no reason to think a weapon was necessary.” I placed the gun on the sofa. “Is beating alimony this important?”
He sat there smoking for a minute, his forehead resolving into three deep lines. He said, “I expected you, or someone like you, to walk in here and put a bullet between my eyes. I didn’t expect a song and dance to go with it.” His eyes locked mine. “I’ll go along with you, what more can I lose? You say my ex-wife hired you. I don’t have any. I’ve never been married,”
“Someone else told me that today, but she was prejudiced.”
Donaldson’s face lighted and he smiled for the first time. “You talked to Eve.”
“Yes, quite a girl.” I picked up the gun and handed it to him. “A Mrs. Anne Donaldson gave me a retainer of two hundred and fifty dollars. The large fee in advance plus the fact that a couple of hoods tried to tail me this evening makes me wonder. Maybe there are people looking for you who can’t come out in the open about it.”
“They’re looking for me all right, looking real hard.” Donaldson held the gun tentatively, as if wondering why he had it, then placed it on a magazine stand beside his chair.
“What’s the trouble,” I said, “maybe I can help. I don’t like being shoved in the middle like this. You think someone is trying to kill you. If that’s true and it happens I’ll be next, since I’m the only one who can point a finger.”
Donaldson had been watching me speculatively, panning my words and appearance, weighing the result on his personal scale of truth. “I’ve got to tell somebody,” he said decisively. “I’m in an absolutely hell of a shape and I don’t know where to turn. I never felt so helpless in my life.” He got up and began stamping the floor in front of me. He lit another cigarette off the butt of the one he was smoking and threw the butt into an ashtray. He complained, “And all on account of a lousy box of candy.”
“Now and then, just before a holiday,” Donaldson began. “My boss gives me six or seven boxes of candy to deliver to a list of customers. The holidays are never the same ones, they can be anything from Easter Sunday to Election Day. Sometimes he thinks one up you never heard of, like Confederate Memorial Day. I used to figure the old duffer was off his rocker, but the gifts of the candy didn’t hurt my calls any so why worry about them.”
“Booker is your boss?”
He nodded. “Ralph Booker, my great and good friend. The last time I was in the office he told me he’d forgotten about Admission Day, but I could pick up the boxes of candy and distribute them before Columbus Day, suiting both occasions.”
“At Bassey’s Confectionery in North Beach. They’re supposed to make wonderful candy. I haven’t thought twice about the place until this last trip.” Donaldson sat in the armchair again. “The customers who get the candy vary for the most part. Once it will be Otham’s in Santa Rosa, another time it’ll be Grundy’s in Ukiah. But two stores are always on Booker’s list, the Pennant Shirt Shops in Tasco and Eureka.” When I didn’t register this news properly he enlarged, “Pennant is a Sacramento chain with stores in California, Oregon and Nevada. They’re Mayflower’s biggest customers.”
“So their store managers are always entitled to the holiday gift.”
“That’s what I figured,” Donaldson said wryly. “When I picked up the candy each box was always tied with a ribbon. Two of them are tied with black ribbons, the rest with pink.”
“The black ribbons go to Pennant Shops,” I prompted as he paused to extinguish his cigarette.
“Yeah. And they’re full of hop.”
I dragged on my cigarette and blew out the smoke. Two and two was making a nasty four. I said, “Mayower Shirts is a narcotic dealer?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Mayflower, Booker or Bassey’s, or all three. Take your pick.”
“How often do you make these deliveries?”
“This was my fourth this year. Before, there was Washington’s Birthday, Easter and Decoration Day,” Donaldson said. “It’s been happening six or seven times a year.”
“That means a lot of money to someone. How large are the boxes?”
“Two pound boxes of assorted chocolates,” he said sourly. “On my way to Eurkea on this last trip I dropped one off at Otham’s in Santa Rosa. By mistake, I gave him a black ribboned box. Later I was having a cup of coffee next door when old Tom Otham came in and showed me the candy. He had bitten into two pieces and the insides looked like unmelted sugar in a kind of hard paper wrapping. I apologized and told him I’d take it back to the factory.”
“Was it horse?”
“I’m coming to that,” Donaldson said impatiently. “I still didn’t catch on, why should I? Bassey’s manufactures plenty of candy, probably they turn out a faulty batch once in awhile. I continued to deliver the rest of it, including a black ribboned box in Tasco. Next day in Eureka I gave Norton, at the Pennant store, a box with a pink ribbon. He caught up with me the following morning in Crescent City and demanded the other box. I explained that the regular box was defective and described what happened at Otham’s, but he told me it was a special type of Greek candy you can only get at Bassey’s. He insisted I give him the box, complete with the pieces Otham bit into.”
“The Greeks get blamed for everything,” I commented.
“On the way home from Crescent City I was almost killed twice on the highway,” Donaldson grimaced at the thought. “First, I hardly noticed it. A joker between Scotia and Garberville kept ahead of me on the straightaways, slowing down on the turns so it looked like I could pass him. I tired passing twice, and each time he speeded up. If a car had come the other way I’d have been a goner.” He lit another cigarette. “The second time was outside Ukiah. A logging truck forced me to the edge of a cliff when no other cars were in sight. I stopped cold, the truck almost went over instead, and I got the hell away from there fast.” Donaldson wiped a rivulet of perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand.