Pot calling the kettle black, I thought.
“What did she say about me?” Mrs. O’Daniel asked.
“Nothing specific. I understand you used to be one of her customers. What happened?”
“I decided to go to another salon, that’s all.”
“Why? Did you have some sort of trouble with Miss Belson?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
Time to back off again. “Who else did Randall date regularly?” I asked.
“I told you, I don’t really know.”
“But you were a friend of his-”
“I didn’t pry into his personal life.”
“You saw him socially, though, didn’t you? Often?”
“Not very often, no.”
“Did you see him on the day he died?”
“Of course not.” But again she said it too quickly. “I don’t see the point of all these questions. Just what are you leading up to?”
“I’m not leading up to anything. I’m only doing my job-asking questions, looking for answers. Trying to find out if anybody has anything to hide.”
“Are you insinuating I have something to hide?”
“Do you, Mrs. O’Daniel?”
She looked a little pale now under her buttery tan. “No,” she said, “I do not,” but the lie was there in her eyes, naked and bright. She got to her feet. “I think you’d better leave now,” she said coldly. “We have nothing more to say to each other.”
“Not for the time being, anyway.”
I stood up too, and she turned immediately and led me back through the house to the front entrance. She didn’t roll her hips this time; she walked in short, choppy steps with her back stiff and straight. When she got to the door she flung it open, stepped back, and looked at me with her eyes smoldering. Scene in an old-time melodrama, I thought. I half expected her to say something like, “Go, and never darken my door again.” But all she said was,
“Well?” when I didn’t walk out right away.
“Your husband told me he was going to spend the weekend on a houseboat,” I said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me where he is.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to talk to him again.”
“About me, I suppose.”
I watched her in silence.
“Oh, all right,” she said. “He’s at Shasta Lake, at a place called Mountain Harbor.”
“Is that a town?”
“No. It’s some sort of boat harbor about fifteen miles from here. He keeps his houseboat there.”
“ His houseboat?”
“I don’t like boats or water. Now will you please leave?”
I left. And she slammed the door shut behind me.
Up by the platform deck, I paused and took another look at the lemon-colored Porsche with the FAST UN license plate. One of Munroe Randall’s neighbors had told me she’d seen “a yellow sports car” parked just down the street from Randall’s house some three hours before he and his house went up in flames. It didn’t have to have been Helen O’Daniel’s Porsche, of course. But I would have given odds and bet a bundle that it was.
Munroe Randall-and maybe Paul Robideaux, too. And no telling yet how many others, or what else she was afraid I might find out about. Helen O’Daniel got around pretty good. For a married woman.
CHAPTER TEN
Three minutes after I pulled into the Sportsman’s Rest, Martin Treacle showed up.
I was standing in front of our room, talking to Kerry, when he came wheeling in. She’d been swimming, because the skimpy little white suit she wore was still wet, but her mood wasn’t any better than when I’d left her. When I said I was going to drive up to Shasta Lake to see Frank O’Daniel again, and offered to take her along, she said no, she was going to shower and then read: she didn’t feel like sitting around and waiting while I conducted any more of my interviews.
Treacle was driving a two-year-old Lincoln Continental. And in spite of the lingering heat he was wearing another three-piece suit, this one made out of some shiny material I didn’t recognize. He was one of these people who manage to look cool and comfortable no matter what the temperature, damn him.
He came over and shook my hand in his earnest way. When I introduced him to Kerry he took her hand too, and I thought briefly that the silly bastard was going to kiss it. He let go of it instead and smiled at her in an approving way. She seemed to like that; the smile she gave him in return was warmer than any she’d let me have all day.
Treacle said to me, “I just got in from the city this afternoon. I called Miss Irwin at home and she told me you were staying here.”
“Mm.”
“How’s it going so far?”
“How’s what going so far?”
“The investigation,” he said. “I guess your findings are about what we expected?”
“Are they?” I said. “Maybe not.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand. You mean there’s some doubt in your mind about Munroe’s death?”
“Some, yes. Did Miss Irwin tell you what happened yesterday at your office?”
“Oh, that,” Treacle said. “Yes, she told me. But that couldn’t have anything to do with Munroe-”
“Coleclaw committed one act of violence; he could have committed another.”
“But you don’t have any evidence of that… or do you?”
“Not yet.”
“He’s just a crank, that’s all,” Treacle said. “He probably wrote that threatening letter to Frank too. It doesn’t have to mean anything ominous.”
He was annoying me again. I still hadn’t managed to work up an active dislike for him, but I was getting closer to it. It wouldn’t be long now.
I got the letter out of my wallet and shoved it under his nose. “Anything familiar about this?” I asked him. “The printing, the paper, the style of wording?”
He blinked at the note. Kerry crowded in and peered at it too. I gave her a look, but she didn’t pay any attention.
“Well?” I said to Treacle.
“No,” he said. “No, none of it is familiar. It looks like a crank note to me. Doesn’t it look that way to you, Miss Wade?”
“Yes,” she said, “it does.”
Bah, I thought. I folded the note and put it back into my wallet.
Treacle said, “Have you been to Musket Creek yet?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there.”
“What did you find out?”
“Not much from the people I talked to,” I said. “But the fire they had was arson.”
“It was?”
“Whoever did it used a candle.” I went back and opened up the trunk and showed him the cup-shaped piece of stone with the wax residue inside. “I found this among the debris,” I said.
He used one of the rags in the trunk to pick it up, and peered at it. Pretty soon he said, “Travertine.”
“Huh?”
“That’s the kind of mineral this is. Travertine-layered calcium carbonate. Geology is one of my interests.”
“An unusual stone?”
“No, not for this part of the country.” He rubbed at it with the rag, ridding it of some of the black from the fire. “It’s fossilized,” he said, and showed me the imprints in the stone. “Bryophytes.”
“What are bryophytes?” Kerry asked.
“Nonflowering plants. Mosses and liverworts.”
“Is that kind of fossil uncommon?”
“Not really. They turn up fairly often in this area.” Treacle picked at the wax residue with his fingernail. “This is purple, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “One of the women over there makes purple candles as a hobby. Ella Bloom.”
“That one,” Treacle said. “She reminds me of a witch.”
“Me too. She threatened me with a shotgun when I tried to talk to her.”
“My God. What did you do?”
“What would you do if somebody started waving a shotgun at you?”
“Why… I’d run, I guess.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I took the stone away from him, put it back into the trunk, and closed the lid. Kerry was fanning herself with one hand; as late in the day as it was-close to five o’clock-the heat out here was oppressive. Treacle noticed her discomfort and waved a hand toward a restaurant-and-bar that adjoined the motel.
“Why don’t we go in where it’s cool and have a drink?”