Nelson moved to the chair at the desk and sat. He looked at the phone and then swiveled the chair with a screech like teeth against a blackboard and glared at me.
“I do not care for you, Mr. Peters,” he said. “That you may have surmised from my demeanor. The Municipality of Mirador has grown in population and industry since you were last here. Murder most violent is not conducive to tourism.”
“I noticed the boomtown excitement,” I said.
“See, there you are. Sarcasm. Big city sarcasm.” He plopped his straw hat on the desk and looked at the phone. “That’s what people move down here to get away from.”
“Nelson,” I said. “Pick up the phone and call the Highway Patrol. This is out of your league.”
“You are a truly vexing person,” he said. “I will indeed call the Highway Patrol in a few moments-to inform them that I have apprehended the murderer of a member of one of Mirador’s oldest families.”
“Oldest,” I repeated. “Not most prominent, most beloved?”
“Oldest will suffice,” said Nelson, looking away from me through the front window of the office. Two kids, one boy, one girl, both about ten, were walking down the middle of the street unthreatened by Mirador’s growth of population and industry. “And respected.”
“Respected?”
“Any family which is capable of contributing one hundred and six votes in a town of a little more than two thousand permanent residents is a respected family,” Nelson explained, letting his fingers touch the phone.
“One hundred and five,” I corrected.
“One hundred and six is what I said and what I meant,” Nelson said with irritation. “Mr. Claude Street was a newcomer to this community and had not yet registered to vote.”
“Newcomer?”
“One who has recently come,” Nelson said with a shake of his head, as if talking to a semi-retarded nephew, “from Carmel.” He said “Carmel” as if it were a particularly sticky and unpleasant word.
“It was not easy to rent that store,” he said.
“You own the store?”
“If it is of any concern to you, I own all of downtown,” Nelson said, without enthusiasm. “And as you can see, it has made my fortune.”
“Nelson, I didn’t kill Claude Street,” I said. “You know that.”
His back was to me now and he was staring at the phone.
“I know no such thing,” he said in total exasperation. “The evidence would suggest quite the contrary. I found you with a gun in your hand.”
“It won’t match the bullet in Street’s neck.”
Nelson’s sigh was enormous.
“You could have shot him with another weapon that you disposed of or have hidden,” he said.
“You’ve wasted a good five minutes.”
“Do you know what I truly wanted to do with my existence?” he asked, picking up the phone and lifting the receiver off the hook. He turned to me quickly, and I shook my head to indicate that he had not previously shared this confidence with me-nor had I figured it from the many clues he had dropped.
Into the phone he said, “Miss Rita Davis Abernathy, will you please connect me with the office of the Highway Patrol … No, Miss Rita, you may not inquire … It is police business … I am confident that if you display even a modicum of patience and listen in on the line after you connect me-which I am as sure you will do as I am sure my mother’s favorite child is sitting in this chair … Thank you, Miss Rita.”
While he waited for Miss Rita to put him through, Nelson turned to me and remarked, “I wanted to be a man of the cloth, as my father was before me, and his father before him.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“I did not have the calling,” he said.
“Amen,” I said as into the phone he said, with great animation, “Lieutenant Freese? It is I, Sheriff Mark Nelson of the Municipality of Mirador. A homicide has taken place.”
He looked at me again and continued, “It is likely that I have apprehended the person who committed the crime, but it is also possible that he had assistance or that … I will be happy to get to the point if you will; my father always said that a man should be allowed to finish what he … About ten minutes ago … I have no deputy on duty. As you may recall, I have only one deputy, Deputy Mendoza, who is using his day off to-Thank you.”
He hung up the phone and turned to me again.
“What has happened to civility in this world?”
He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.
“A lost art,” I sympathized.
“There is but one church in this town and the minister, alas, is without style or substance.” Nelson stood up.
I knew-and Nelson knew-that he should go a few doors down and at least give the impression he knew what he was doing, but he didn’t have the heart for it. In the long run, he was doing the right thing, staying out of the way till the Highway Patrol showed up.
“How few of us are fortunate enough to achieve our life ambitions,” he said.
“It’s better to have ambitions and not achieve them than to have none at all,” I responded.
Nelson looked at me seriously for the first time since our eyes had met through the window of Claude Street’s Old California Shop.
“First Corinthians?” he asked.
“Charlie Chan in Rio,” I answered.
Neither of us spoke again until the Highway Patrol car pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office about twenty minutes later. I lay on the cot looking at the ceiling and Nelson sat looking out the window at the car from which two Highway Patrol officers in full uniform and as big as redwoods stepped out and looked around. There wasn’t much to see.
Nelson was up, hat in hand, as phony a smile as I’ve seen anywhere but on the face of a receptionist at Columbia Pictures.
“It is not my day,” Nelson said between his closed smiling teeth. “The Rangley brothers.”
The two state troopers came in and moved past Nelson in my direction. One had a face like Alley Oop with a shave and the other one looked like his brother.
“Trooper Rangley,” Nelson began. “This-”
“Where’s the dead man?” interrupted the bigger Rangley.
“Two doors down,” said Nelson. “In the Old California Antique Shop. His name is …”
But the Rangley’s, after looking at me as if to say I was one sorry specimen, turned and went back out on the street. They moved out of sight to the right of the window. Nelson turned to me. “I cannot but believe, though it runs counter to reason,” he said, “that you have killed Mr. Claude Street for the sole purpose of bringing tribulation into my life.”
“I didn’t kill him, Nelson,” I said.
Nelson’s smile was gone.
“My lady is waiting for me,” he said. “My fondest wish at this moment is to absent myself and allow the Rangley brothers-who, to the best of my knowledge, have no first names nor any need of them-to persuade you to confess to every crime committed within the state of California from moments after your birth to the instant I confined you to that cell.”
“Here they come,” I said.
Nelson put his smile back on and pivoted in his swivel chair to face the Rangleys as they came back into the sheriff’s office.
“Man’s dead in there,” said the bigger Rangley.
“That was my conclusion upon witnessing the corpse,” said Nelson.
There were two possible ways to interpret Sheriff Nelson’s statement: He was either humoring these walking specimens of recently quarried stone, or he was making a joke he was confident would elude them. I would have voted for the former, but Rangley Number Two was taking no chances.
He was about a foot taller than Nelson. He stopped in front of him and smiled. Though I didn’t think it possible, Nelson’s smile got even broader.
Big Rangley was moving toward me in the cell. I kept sitting on the cot. His face was red and Alley Oop wasn’t smiling at me.