As he drove down to the paved road he asked casually: “What do you make of her?”
I knew he meant Myra Young. It wasn’t an easy question to answer. I honestly didn’t know what to make of her. I said: “She doesn’t bother to put on any outward semblance of grief.”
“She didn’t yesterday... even when we first brought news that her husband had been murdered.”
“Yet, she’s supposed to have been jealous of him,” I argued. “A woman isn’t jealous of a man she doesn’t love.”
Burke drove slowly, his expression one of preoccupation. “I got the idea yesterday that she has been hanging onto Leslie for some time, knowing it was a losing game... knowing that he cared, temporarily at least, for someone else. I felt, somehow, that it was more of a relief to her than anything else to suddenly realize that the struggle was ended and she didn’t have to keep on trying to stave off what she knew was inevitable.”
There was a culvert just ahead. A gully flattened out into the wooded valley. We both knew that spot. Burke slowed crossing the culvert, turned to the right on a little-used road, drove into a clump of trees and stopped.
We looked around wordlessly for a minute or two. Then I said, “This is where Laura Yates met him,” more to myself than to him. The grass was badly trampled but there was still a rusty splotch of blood where Young’s body had lain. I was still thinking that a man had been kissed, marked with a cross... murdered, when Burke said:
“No use wasting time here. Jelcoe and his human bloodhounds have been over every inch of the ground. If there’d been a clue, Jelcoe wouldn’t have missed it. He does get the facts.”
He led the way beyond the shaded spot into bright sunlight. I stopped beside him, looking up the slope of the Young cabin. “It’s much less than a mile straight down here from the house,” I pointed out.
Burke nodded, following my thought: “If she knew about this meeting place she could easily have followed him unseen, hidden in the brush and watched that last fatal kiss from Laura Yates’ rouged lips... then let him have it after Laura had driven away.”
“What about the two-barred cross on his cheek?”
“That,” Burke admitted, “is just one of a lot of things I wish I understood.”
Up the other slope, to our left, was the low stone wall surrounding the Dwight estate. Gray stone turrets showed their tops above the wall.
Burke’s eyes narrowed as his gaze went from the Young cabin across the ravine to the Dwight estate. He slid down the bank to the rock-strewn bottom of the dry wash and started following its winding course upward.
I moved along behind him without asking any questions. His broad shoulders were hunched forward and he moved as stealthily as an Indian scout. I didn’t have the faintest idea what sudden thought had come to him, but I knew it was important and that I’d know in good time.
Thorny mesquite branches whipped our faces and the tiny fangs of catclaw bushes tore at our clothing. Not a breath of air stirred in the gully and the sun blazed down mercilessly upon us.
It was slow going, with Burke taking every precaution to make no sound. I followed just as cautiously without in the least knowing what or who he was stalking.
It must have taken us half an hour to cover much less than a mile when Burke suddenly stopped. Moving close to look over his shoulder I saw in front of him the unmistakable mark of footprints crossing the gully at right angles. They were jumbled and messy in the loose sand, pointing in both directions. Traces of an old path showed on each side of the gully, now overgrown with fresh foliage which showed distinct signs that the old path had been lately traversed.
While Burke stood there peering down at the footprints as though they proved something important, the thought came to me that we must be in an almost direct line between the Young cabin and the Dwight mansion. I thought that might be significant and was on the point of mentioning it to Burke when we heard the sound of approaching footsteps from our right.
Burke stepped backward without warning and the sudden impact of his heavy body almost knocked me down. He grabbed my arm and pushed me back cautiously around a bend where we were screened from view by the leafy branches of a mesquite. We stood close together, our eyes glued to the crossing, and the footsteps came closer by the moment.
I don’t know whom I expected to see. Certainly not Myra Young.
But we both saw her clearly as she slid down into the gully, stalked across in her riding boots and climbed up the other side toward the Dwight estate.
She was bareheaded and her face was flushed; whether from the sun or from some inner emotion I could not tell.
We stood with the sweat dripping down from our faces until the sound of her footsteps died away in the afternoon stillness.
“What do you make of it?” I asked Burke excitedly.
He shook his head. “If the MUM case taught me anything at all it was never to indulge in a theory. Come on. You and I are going to pay Mr. Raymond Dwight an informal visit. Perhaps he’ll serve us tea and crumpets.”
9
A two-lane concrete drive curved off the main road between magnificent granite columns. The upward sweep of rocky slope had been sodded to thick turf and expensively landscaped with exotic shrubbery and trees which God hadn’t intended to bloom this close to the desert. The layout looked as though it might easily have set Dwight back a million bucks, and the upkeep on it must have swallowed up the income from a couple more millions.
It was a good half mile to the sprawling two-story mansion flanked by tennis courts, formal gardens, and even a palm-bordered swimming pool remindful of pictures you see — and don’t believe — of Hollywood estates.
Burke parked in a semi-circular concrete area in front of the house and we walked down a path of marble flagstones leading beneath an arbor of climbing roses to a wide front porch with granite columns supporting a second-story balcony. The flagged walk turned off to the right and left just in front of the steps, and we paused there as we heard a shrill voice coming around from the right side of the house:
“But I saw her come. Just a few minutes ago. She’s making up to Pops with her own husband not buried yet. It’s goddamn indecent if you ask me.”
We couldn’t tell whether the answering voice was male or otherwise. It was throaty and effeminate:
“That sun-bath technique looked like a decoy to me from the first. I had a hunch she knew all along that she was showing herself off in front of a telescope.”
“Pops wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him she was just giving him the old come-on. You know how he is when he sees soft meat.”
Jerry Burke’s fingers were biting into my arm. He led me quietly along the walk toward the voices.
“She was smart enough to make him come after her,” the second voice drawled.
“And to stall him with a virtuous act until her husband was well out of the way. Then, she comes running.”
“What we need,” the effeminate voice suggested, “is another little drink.”
Burke kept going when we reached the corner of the house. Four huge oaks made a triangle of heavy shade over two figures lying belly-down on a Navajo blanket. A silver serving tray stood on the grass in front of them, holding four frosted silver julep cups and two empties. Their buttocks were toward us as we approached on the thick grass and it was difficult to determine which pair, if either, was masculine.
They wore shorts which left nine-tenths of their suntanned skin uncovered. The back hair of the figure on the left was cut shorter than the one on the right and I guessed that one to be male.