Decker said, “I’ve been giving some thought to what we talked about last night-you know, the possibility that O’Daniel’s boat was deliberately blown up. I still can’t figure a way it could’ve been done, not unless he arranged it himself to commit suicide.”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” I said. “It has to be either an accident or murder.”
“Which way are you leaning?”
“Away from accident. But that’s not based on anything substantial yet.”
“Well, if you’re right,” he said, “it has to have been some sort of rigged-up device, something that would cause the explosion without the killer being on board and without leaving any traces. If somebody else thought of it, one of us ought to be able to think of it too, sooner or later.”
When we went outside again the sheriff’s men had the Kokanee winched clear and were getting ready to load it onto a long boat trailer. I drove us away from there without wasting any time. I did not want to look at that dripping, burned-out hulk; I wanted to forget it and last night as quickly as possible, bury them in that shallow mental grave I reserved for the horrors and near-horrors that touched my life.
The first drops of rain began to splatter against the windshield just after we turned onto Highway 5. Within minutes, it was coming down in sheets and the gusty wind that had sprung up with it was strong enough to wobble the car. Lightning slashed and flickered in the vicinity of Mt. Shasta. Thunder kept rumbling, very close, very loud. The day turned so dark it was almost like dusk, and what light remained was a wet, eerie gray, tinged with yellow every now and then from the lightning flashes.
Neither of us said much until we crossed the bridge over Turntable Bay. Then Kerry asked, “Where are we going now?” She sounded a little subdued; I thought it was probably the weather. It made me feel a little subdued myself.
“ We’re not going anywhere,” I said. “You’re going back to the motel; I’m going to Musket Creek.”
“Oh? And why don’t I get to go there too?”
“Because I’m going to see Paul Robideaux and it might not be a pleasant discussion. Besides which, you coming along yesterday didn’t work out too well.”
“Meaning I got in your way, I suppose.”
“Meaning it might not be safe for you out there.”
“Oh, crap,” she said. “You still won’t admit you handled things badly yesterday, will you?”
“All right, I’ll admit it. But that was yesterday; this is today. And another man died in between. I’m going alone-that’s all there is to it.”
I expected her to give me more argument, the you’re-a-macho-jerk routine again, but she didn’t. “Do what you have to,” she said, and scrunched down on the seat, and sat staring out at the rain. She didn’t have anything else to say on the ride to Sportsman’s Rest, and nothing to say once we got there; she just opened the door and got out of the car and ran for the room.
Another fun evening ahead, I thought gloomily as I U-turned out of the motel lot. Some job. Some vacation. Some soul mate.
It was enough to make you consider misogyny as an alternative lifestyle.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There was rain at Musket Creek too, but it wasn’t as heavy, and little jigsaw patterns of blue were visible here and there among the clouds. The lightning and all but dim echoes of the thunder had stayed over near Redding. In the dreary light, the little valley and its collection of relics and anomalies had a desolate, forgotten look, like a vision of something out of the past-something small and insignificant, something doomed.
The road was muddy from the rain; I had had to drive at twenty all the way in from Highway 299, and had to crawl at an even slower pace down the steep hillside into town. Lights burned in Coleclaw’s mercantile, in Ella Bloom’s cottage up on the hillock-pale blobs against the wet gray afternoon-but nobody was out and around that I could see. I drove in among the ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch. My imagination made them into crouching things, battered and weary old shades with blind eyes and signboards for mouths, waiting for night to fall. The things they’d seen, the things they knew… just the thought of it put a small, cold ruffling on the back of my scalp, as if somebody had blown his breath across it.
I saw no one among the buildings either, and no one on the way up the far slope and into the woods. The shadows were thick here; it might have been twilight. The rain made hollow dripping noises in the trees, glistened and writhed like silverfish in my headlight beams.
Paul Robideaux’s cabin was just that-a country cabin made out of notched logs, with a peaked roof to keep the snow from piling up during the winter. Both front windows showed light. Down in front, just off the road, was the jeep Robideaux had been driving yesterday. It was alone there, until I put my car alongside it and gave it some company.
Robideaux must have heard the sound of my car’s engine; the front door opened just as I reached the porch and he stood there glowering at me. The glower faded somewhat when he got a good look at my face, but he pumped it up again after a couple of seconds and said, “What the hell are you doing here?” in the same belligerent tone he’d used on our first meeting.
“I’ve got some questions to ask you, Mr. Robideaux.”
“You tried that yesterday,” he said. “It didn’t work then; it’s not going to work now. Beat it. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Maybe you’ll have something to say to the county sheriffs investigators, then.”
“What?”
“They’ll be along pretty soon. And they won’t be as easy to deal with as I am.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? I’m talking about Frank O’Daniel.”
“That bastard. What about him?”
“He’s dead. Or didn’t you know?”
It seemed he hadn’t known. Either that, or he was putting on a good act. He said, “Dead? What do you mean, dead?”
“It’s been on the radio.”
“I don’t listen to the radio. O’Daniel… what happened to him? How did he die?”
“His houseboat blew up last night at Shasta Lake. I was there; I almost got blown up myself.”
“Jesus,” Robideaux said. The belligerence was gone now; he looked shaken, a little pale around the gills.
“It might have been an accident,” I said, “just like Munroe Randall’s death might have been an accident. I’m betting neither one was, though. I’m betting they were both murdered.”
He shook his head, as if he were only half listening to me; the other half of his mind seemed to be on something else. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “I was here last night.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. Alone.”
“No visitors?”
“Listen, you,” he said, “I’m not doing any more talking. Not to you, not to anybody until I see my lawyer.” He started to back up, to close the door.
I said, “Have it your way. I’ll go get the truth out of Mrs. O’Daniel.”
He stopped backing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
“You tell me, smart-ass.”
“I’ve seen that painting of yours she’d got hanging over her fireplace,” I said. “And I know about the two of you. Now you and I can talk it over, or I can go to her. Either way. And watch what you call me from now on. I’ve had all the crap I’m going to take off you or anybody else.”
Part of it was a shot in the dark; if there was nothing between him and Helen O’Daniel, all he had to do was slam the door in my face. But he didn’t do that. He just stood there looking at me. No glower now; his long, thin face was still pale, and if anything he looked worried and maybe a little scared.
Ten seconds went by while we matched stares. It was no contest, though: He let his breath out in a wobbly sigh and said, “Okay. We’ll talk.”
“Inside, huh? It’s wet out here.”
He backed up again, into the room this time, and let me come in and shut the door. The place was as much an artist’s studio as it was living quarters; most of the rear wall was glass, a skylight had been cut into the roof back there, and that part of the room was cluttered with easels, canvases, a table full of bottles and tubes and brushes, a paint-stained drop cloth on the floor. The walls were covered with finished oils, and more were propped up along the baseboard-fifty or sixty altogether, at a quick guess. Not all of them were as awful as the one over Helen O’Daniel’s fireplace, but they were all in the same vomit-stirred-on-canvas class and all done in odd pastels and off-colors. The effect was almost hallucinatory, like a bad trip on some drug or other. A claustrophobe trapped in here would have gone bonkers inside of ten minutes.