“That’s okay. Like I said, it’s closed. Why don’t you go home? We want the whole thing forgotten.”
“Orders from Mr. C. Gerald Rice?”
The man moved close. Jay was tempted to step back, but didn’t. A hard knuckle rapped his chest, emphasizing the words. “Get this straight, Shelby. I do my job here. But I don’t take orders from Rice. I was assigned here. If Rice steps out of line. I’ll bring him up short just as quick as I will you. And what you just said was out of line. The sheriff gives me my orders. And if he lets Rice tell him what orders to give me, that’s his business. Is that clear enough?”
“That’s clear enough.”
A small, elderly man came trotting in. He seemed highly excited. He was saying, “Dockerty! Hey, Dockerty!” He wore denims faded to sky-blue, a stubble of white beard, a battered hat. He looked like a movie extra.
“What’s on your mind, Ab? Catch your breath and tell it slow.”
Ab took his hat off and stared into it, breathing heavily. He said, “Well, I guess there isn’t so much of a hurry, anyhow. Dockerty, did I tell you about my dog missing? No? Well, he has been. Four days now. Never gone before. So I figured he went roaming and got hisself snake-bit and couldn’t make it back to the place. Tinney, he’s from that dude layout, he came by this morning, had some of those ladies out for a dawn ride, and he tells me that after sunup he sees buzzards circling off behind Candy Ridge, you know, off there near Tyler’s line where—”
“I know where it is, Ab,” Dockerty said wearily.
“Tinney figured it might be my dog, and he couldn’t go look on account of getting the ladies back for breakfast, so I took off in the jeep and had a hard time finding the place on account of they weren’t circling. They’d settled. I went on up there leaving the jeep and, by heaven, Dockerty, it’s a dead woman.”
Dockerty’s bored air vanished. He took two strides and clapped his hand on Ab’s shoulder and shook him. “You sure?”
“Dead sure. She’s some sun-dried, but by heaven, I know a woman when I see one. Don’t go shaking me, Dockerty. It makes me nervous. It was like this. Somebody piled a mess of rocks on her. I could see the tracks, where coyotes got some of the rock off her, and that’s what brought the birds at sunup. I piled the rocks back on, and I come right here first thing to tell you.”
Dockerty frowned and snapped his fingers, staring at the floor. “Okay, Ab. Your jeep in front? Wait right there. I’ll get hold of Doc and—” He looked at Jay. “You’re through here, aren’t you?”
Jay left. He walked in the molten sun. He drove back to the Terrace Inn. As he parked, Ellen drove up in her small yellow convertible and parked several cars away. She stood waiting for him, smiling, tapping the side of her boot with a small riding crop. The man’s white shirt, collar open, sleeves rolled high, set off the red-bronze tan. Her jodhpurs were faded and battered, and they fitted her snugly, accentuating the long, lean thighlines, the compact hips, her high-waisted, long-legged build.
“Don’t get too close,” she said. “Effluvium of horse. We had a long run, and he got lathered up. Have fun with your Hollywood type?”
They walked slowly, side by side, toward the main entrance of the Terrace Inn. “Not completely a Hollywood type, Ellen. More than that. Don’t let the ice-cream hat fool you. I’m a layman, but I got a look at the file and it looks pretty thorough to me. Now he’s got a lot more on his mind. Look, meet me in the casino bar after you scrub off, and I’ll brief you on the latest murder.”
“Murder! For that I will hurry.”
He was still nursing a cocktail when she came through the casino, wearing a full skirt in gay awning colors, a sheer charcoal blouse. They had the small bar to themselves. She sat on a stool beside him. Her eyes sparkled. “Now a tale of violence, please.”
He watched her face change as he told her. Before he finished, she looked away.
“How dreadful!” she said softly. “I guess you’d have to see Candy Ridge. It’s a stark and lonely place, Jay. A jumble of rocks and ledges, where the wind whines. A dead woman. A bad place to be dead in, Jay.”
“Would it be hard to get a body up onto the ridge?”
“No. One road comes close. It wouldn’t be hard. There’s nothing there. Just the sand and the ridge and some Joshua trees.” She shuddered and then gave him an apologetic smile. “It shouldn’t get me. It’s just a bad place.”
“We’ll drop the subject.”
“Gladly. Gladly. New subject, please.”
“This isn’t exactly a gay subject, but it’s a change. Did you happen to notice whether Joan had taken up wearing nail polish?”
“No. I never saw her wear it.”
“I saw pictures of her this morning. They were quite clear. She was wearing dark nail polish.”
“Then she must have had it on the... last time I saw her. But I can’t remember seeing it. I was pretty upset, you know. I suppose the maid who packed her things would remember if there was nail polish. Then again she might not. Her name is Amparo. Very pretty little thing. But is it important?”
“Only in that it’s so completely uncharacteristic. As though it were somebody else who drowned. But I know it was Joan.”
“You are completely certain?”
He asked the bartender for a pencil and a piece of paper. The bartender gave him an unused check. He tested the hardness of the pencil, and then with Ellen watching over his shoulder, he sketched Joan’s face, quickly, deftly, with the precision of practice and perfect memory, giving her in this sketch a look of breathless warmth. Ellen made a small sound.
“I know her face this well.” he said, and crumpled the sketch.
“That is very well, indeed.” Ellen said. She took the crumpled paper from the ashtray and smoothed it out and then crumpled it up again. “It’s almost indecent the way you can do that. Jay. That isn’t a very good word. Al... well, an invasion of privacy or something.”
He grinned at her, wanting to change the emotional climate for them, and called for more paper. He drew her as he had seen her walking away from him, toward her room, riding crop swinging.
She laughed. “Are they getting that tight?”
“Artistic license.” And he sketched another figure, making the riding pants absurdly baggy, the seat sagging grotesquely. She took the paper and snapped it into her small purse.
“I’ll keep it.”
“I’d like to do one of you some day, Ellen. Your face.”
“Goodness, such a clinical look.”
“I’m looking at the bones. Very nice.” He reached out with a forefinger. “These hollows at the temples, this fullness of your upper eyelids, this long sweep here of the jaw. All very good stuff. Heaven deliver me from painting pretty faces.”
“Sir!” Smiling.
“Handsome faces. Faces with some living in them. Faces with some guts and some loneliness and some strength and some wanting. Anything but the low broad foreheads of the Miss Americas, their infant pug noses, their flat plump Mongoloid cheeks, their eyes that have seen nothing and say nothing, and their big peasant mouths.”
She drew back. “You do get intense.”
“Occupational disease. Skip it.”
“I sort of liked it.”
“You’re easy to talk to, Ellen.”
“I like that, too. And right now I could eat the top right off this bar and the felt off that dice table.”
After they had eaten, she smothered a yawn and grimaced. “A creature of habit. It’s my nap time. Why don’t you join me for a swim afterward? Say about three?”
“Fine. I’ll pick up some trunks in town. And see what I can find out about the lady of Candy Ridge.”
“I don’t think I want to know any more about that lady.”