By ten-fifteen, I was parked in front of the Crenshaws' one-level rambler, where both the porch light and several interior lights were on. The flickering glow of a television set told me someone was home. I rang the bell.
Calvin, clad in a bathrobe and floppy slippers and wearing a sleepy yellow tabby cat draped across one shoulder, came to the door. He opened it and frowned when he saw who I was. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to talk. Can I come in?"
He hesitated for a moment before stepping away from the door and holding it open. "I suppose." It was hardly an engraved invitation. "What do you want?"
"To talk," I repeated. "With both you and Louise."
"She isn't here," he said.
"When will she be back?"
He shook his head. "Who knows? We don't keep very close tabs on one another."
He shut the front door and padded back into the living room, moving carefully so as not to disturb the cat. I followed a few paces behind him. Calvin settled comfortably into a high-backed chair that made me homesick for my own leather recliner back home in Seattle.
"Have a seat," he said, motioning me onto the couch.
The cat raised its head, blinked once or twice, then stood and stretched before climbing languorously down from its shoulder perch. In Calvin's ample lap, it circled several times and then settled contentedly into a compact gold-and-orange-striped ball. The cat's noisy purring could be heard all the way across the room.
Calvin scratched the cat's chin affectionately. "His name is Hobbes," he said to me. "You know, like in the comics?"
I didn't know someone named Hobbes from a hole in the ground. "I don't read the comics," I explained. "I don't read newspapers at all."
Calvin Crenshaw looked at me with one raised eyebrow and then he nodded. "I see," he said. "So what is it you came here to talk about?"
"The snake. Ringo. Joey Rothman's pet rattlesnake. Why is Louise insisting that the snake I found in my cabin was a wild snake that wandered in out of the rain? Rhonda Attwood saw it and positively identified it when Lucy Washington pawned her off on Shorty to come find me. Rhonda told me right then that it was Joey's snake, that he'd had it for almost fourteen years."
Calvin sighed. "It's gone. I told Louise that was a mistake, but by then she'd already ordered Shorty to get rid of it. It's useless to try to cover up that kind of thing, you know, but Louise was all upset at the time and not thinking very straight. She was in no condition to listen to advice from anybody, me included."
"You mean you already knew about the snake?"
"Shorty told me about Mrs. Attwood's identification. I knew right away that it was only a matter of time, but I try to let Louise handle things her own way. I thought a day or two might give her a chance to pull herself together. This has really been hard on her, you know."
"Hard on Louise!" I exclaimed. "How about me? Covering up an attempted homicide is a crime-obstruction of justice. I should think that detective from Prescott would have pointed that out to you by now."
"I've talked to her," Calvin said, "and straightened things out. It was unfortunate that the snake disappeared in all the confusion. The detective told me she'll be down tomorrow morning to take Shorty's statement."
It was some small consolation, but not much.
"I take it, then, that now you do finally believe that somebody tried to kill me?"
Calvin Crenshaw nodded reluctantly. "I suppose so."
"You wouldn't happen to have any idea who, would you?"
He laughed. "You're asking me?"
"That's right. You and your wife seem to have gone to a good deal of trouble to conceal what really happened. I'm wondering why."
"You're barking up the wrong tree, Mr. Beaumont. Murder, attempted or otherwise, isn't my bailiwick."
"Unless you were covering up for your wife."
That single blunt statement was a calculated attack, a ploy I had been planning on the drive up from Phoenix. I waited quietly, watching Calvin Crenshaw's reaction.
He blinked in what seemed like genuine astonishment. "Covering up for Louise? You've got to be kidding. Certainly you don't think she's the one who tried to kill you, do you?"
"Her behavior as far as I'm concerned has been totally irrational since the very first day I set foot on Ironwood Ranch."
"Oh, that," Calvin said, sounding immensely relieved, as if it had all suddenly become clear to him. "Of course. I can see how you could misread it."
"Misread what?"
"Her behavior toward you. Louise doesn't handle rejection very well. You hurt her feelings."
It was my turn to blink. "I hurt her feelings?"
"Joey Rothman was nothing but a temporary aberration," Calvin continued, "a ship passing in the night. You're far more Louise's type, far more to her liking generally. If you had given her the least bit of encouragement, I'm sure she would have tossed Joey aside completely, but you made it clear that you weren't interested. You didn't take the bait when she offered it. Yes, you hurt her feelings."
"Wait just a damn minute here. Take what bait? What the hell are you talking about?"
"The results of long-term drinking aren't always entirely reversible," Calvin said circumspectly, seeming to change the subject entirely.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I've been with a rather permanent impairment in the sexual activity department."
"Oh," I said, although I still couldn't make out exactly where he was leading.
Calvin continued. "Louise doesn't seem to mind, at least not most of the time, but every once in a while, she does. When that happens, she tends to target one of the clients. For strictly recreational purposes, you see."
"You're telling me that periodically your wife gets her rocks off with one of your clients at Ironwood Ranch? That you know about it and let her?"
He shrugged. "It doesn't bother me particularly. None of it's ever serious. After all, you people are only here for six weeks at a time, and then you go away, back home where you belong, and Louise is fine for a few more months."
I was dumbfounded. Calvin Crenshaw, talking smoothly and without hesitation, discussed his wife's ongoing recreational infidelities among her patients the way he might describe her suffering from the ill effects of a common cold.
"And as I said," he added, "most of the time it's been with men like you-fortyish, good-looking macho types, fairly stable except for the drinking. Louise seems to prefer drinkers to other kinds of addicts, so I'll admit I was a bit startled when she took up with Joey, but then maybe he was the one who made the first move. It's been my observation that older women are always flattered when younger men find them attractive. Just like older men with younger women."
"So this has been a long-term thing and you've done nothing about it?"
"What would you have had me do, Beau? Throw the men involved out of the program? Not on your life, not at nine thou a crack. Get rid of her, then? No way. I need Louise here. She runs the place. Without her running the show, Ironwood Ranch would fall apart in two minutes flat. No matter what you think about her personal foible, Louise is a helluva good administrator. She may have her idiosyncracies, but she doesn't miss a trick."
Calvin Crenshaw seemed unfazed by his own unfortunate choice of words. Maybe they didn't register with him. They did with me.
"I was under the impression that professional medical ethics preclude taking patients to bed," I observed sarcastically.
"My wife is a healthy, red-blooded, middle-aged, sexually liberated woman who has had the misfortune of marrying an involuntary monk. She's making the best of a bad bargain."