She shook her head with a frown. “No. But the disguised roughneck who said he knew Mr. and Mrs. Young seemed vaguely familiar. Good clothes couldn’t hide the piratical look he has.”
The telephone rang. Burke answered it while Laura got up after giving Tuck’s head a farewell pat, and came over to stand close to me. Laura sat down in a chair close to me and looked as if she wanted to ask some questions, but I forestalled her by picking up the evening Free Press and glancing at the front page.
Jerry came back from the phone rubbing his chin meditatively. “It begins to tie up,” he said. “I’ve had the Mexican authorities checking on Michaela O’Toole. She is the daughter of an American renegade, Michael O’Toole, and her mother is a Maya Indian from Yucatan. She’s a radical firebrand, an active leader in the Young Socialistic Movement of Mexico which has been clamoring for the nationalization of all the natural resources of the country. There’s a link... some sort of a link... between Raymond Dwight, Michaela O’Toole, and Leslie Young’s murder.”
“How and when was Les killed?” Laura asked.
“Shot through the head with a .25 automatic about a mile up the canyon from his cabin at approximately three o’clock this afternoon,” Burke told her bluntly.
“A mile up the canyon?” Laura dropped her air of bravado and self-confidence for the first time since I’d met her.
Burke nodded. “His horse was tied to a sapling and he had evidently met and talked with someone in a car.”
Laura looked at Burke, turned away quickly from his piercing eyes. For a moment she was silent, and I could tell that she was doing some fast thinking. After a while she said:
“Then... he must have been shot just after I drove away.”
“With your lipstick still hot on his mouth,” Jerry Burke agreed drily.
“Les was like that. He didn’t believe in impersonal friendship between the sexes.” Laura also spoke drily but there was a faint flush on her cheeks.
“Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Did he say anything to indicate he might be in danger?”
“There was only the anonymous telephone call warning him to stay clear of the hacienda. He joked about that. He was sitting under a tree smoking a cigarette when I left him.”
“He was lying under the tree when Asa and the pups found him a little before four o’clock.”
“There goes a swell batch of feature material,” Laura said disgustedly, and I had the feeling that Young’s death meant exactly that to her and no more.
Which shouldn’t have mattered to me, but somehow it did.
“Suppose you run Miss Yates home?” Burke suggested to me. “I’ll probably still be here when you get back... if it isn’t too late.”
“It won’t be late,” I told him, getting up. Laura went out with me to my car and told me she lived in the 3800 block on Tularosa. It was a fifteen-minute drive from my place and we didn’t say anything during those fifteen minutes.
She pointed out an old frame house that had been made over into housekeeping apartments, and I pulled up in front. She got her overnight bag out of the back while I sat glumly behind the wheel.
She affected me in a perversely different way from any woman I’d ever met. I was tremendously attracted by her, and ashamed because I was. It was something I couldn’t analyze. Just one of those things that are. I’m pretty sure she knew how I felt.
She came around to my side of the car and put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry I spoiled things for you at the hacienda by speaking out of turn.” Her voice was warmer, more nearly human than it had been before.
“And I’m sorry the cops came in when they did.” I didn’t know I was going to say that. I didn’t know why I said it. Just one of those inane things that a man says and doesn’t mean. Or... maybe I did mean it. Looking back, I guess maybe I did.
Her fingers tightened on my arm. There was that same pulsing warmth I had felt before. She said:
“I’ll be seeing you. I’m going to do some personal checking on Leslie’s murder.”
“Do you think it’ll make a feature story?” I asked bitterly.
“It might.” She was gone down the path and a mocking laugh floated over her shoulder to me.
Burke was sitting in the living room when I got back. He got up and yawned when I came in the door.
“It doesn’t add up, Asa. Why did Michaela O’Toole write that come-on note to Young? Who warned him not to go... and why? O’Toole and her political faction are ardently opposed to any payment for expropriated oil property... what’s her hook-up with Dwight and Hardiman? How well did Dwight know Leslie Young? Was Young alive when Laura Yates drove away from the canyon this afternoon?”
I dropped moodily into a chair. “Why ask me? I’m not an oracle.”
“They are important questions, Asa,” he said. “It’s a touchy business... digging into international relationships.” He looked moody and prepossessed, and I had the feeling that he was not talking to me, but to himself.
“What,” I asked him, “did you find out on your trip to the hacienda tonight?”
“Not a damned thing,” he admitted. “I was watching through a window and saw you jerked out and taken upsairs. And I overheard them phoning for the police to come for you, so I knew you weren’t in any actual danger. That’s why I motioned up to you to let matters take their course.” He yawned and got up, reaching for his hat.
“We’ll be visiting McKelligon’s Canyon tomorrow,” he said, starting for the door. “There are some questions I want to ask Mrs. Young and Raymond Dwight.”
8
Burke picked me up after lunch and we drove out to the canyon in his car. “I’ve been thinking about something,” I told him as soon as we started. “Someone at the hacienda must have known Young was dead... else why would they call the police to arrest us for murder?”
Burke shook his head. “The Juarez police had the murder report as a matter of routine. Michaela O’Toole called and asked them to investigate a couple claiming to be Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Young. From all reports, O’Toole is a shrewd woman. The note... the arrest... everything might be a ruse to throw suspicion away from herself... or someone else who is involved.”
I settled back on the seat while he drove unhurriedly north on Piedras Street. The McTelligon Canyon road takes off from the north end of Piedras, leading through a rugged slit deep into Franklin Mountains.
I couldn’t get Laura Yates out of my mind. I kept wondering if she had a pistol and whether it was a .25. It recurred to me time and again that she had the best opportunity to kill Leslie Young of any one we had suspected so far. Yet, it was impossible to think of her as a murderess. She appeared to have nothing to hide, answered questions wholeheartedly.
But perhaps that was her way of covering up... just as Michaela O’Toole used cunning... and Mrs. Young openly admitting that she was glad her husband was dead. Then there was Hardiman... and Dwight.
I had them all on a merry-go-round together, trying to supply a motive for murder for each of them when I realized that we were on the paved road leading through the rugged canyon.
With an effort I forgot the murder to enjoy the desert plants and innumerable varieties of cacti blooming profusely along the sloping floor of the canyon, and the rocky walls which were brilliant splashes of color drenched by the afternoon sun. Here and there were turnouts leading to picnic spots, with rustic ovens and cabins nestled beneath clumps of trees along both slopes. Peace and serenity were everywhere and the mood of the hills came over me.