We came to the center of town and turned north on Euclid, along the splendid parkway. Degarmo sneered at the grevillea trees.
After a while he said: “That was my girl that drowned in the lake up there. I haven’t been right in the head since I heard about it. All I can see is red. If I could get my hands on that guy Chess—”
“You made enough trouble,” I said, “letting her get away with murdering Almore’s wife.”
I stared straight ahead through the windshield. I knew his head moved and his eyes froze on me. I didn’t know what his hands were doing. I didn’t know what expression was on his face. After a long time his words came. They came through tight teeth and edgeways, and they scraped a little as they came out.
“You a little crazy or something?”
“No,” I said. “Neither are you. You know as well as anybody could know anything that Florence Almore didn’t get up out of bed and walk down to that garage. You know she was carried. You know that was why Talley stole her slipper, the slipper that had never walked on a concrete path. You knew that Almore gave his wife a shot in the arm at Condy’s place and that it was just enough and not any too much. He knew his shots in the arm the way you know how to rough up a bum that hasn’t any money or any place to sleep. You know that Almore didn’t murder his wife with morphine and that if he wanted to murder her, morphine would be the last thing in the world he would use. But you know that somebody else did, and that Almore carried her down to the garage and put her there—technically still alive to breathe in some monoxide, but medically just as dead as though she had stopped breathing. You know all that.”
Degarmo said softly: “Brother, how did you ever manage to live so long?”
I said: “By not falling for too many gags and not getting too much afraid of professional hard guys. Only a heel would have done what Almore did, only a heel and a badly scared man who had things on his soul that wouldn’t stand daylight. Technically he may even have been guilty of murder. I don’t think the point has ever been settled. Certainly he would have a hell of a time proving that she was in such a deep coma that she was beyond any possibility of help. But as a practical matter of who killed her, you know the girl killed her.”
Degarmo laughed. It was a grating unpleasant laugh, not only mirthless, but meaningless.
We reached Foothill Boulevard and turned east again. I thought it was still cool, but Degarmo was sweating. He couldn’t take his coat off because of the gun under his arm.
I said: “The girl, Mildred Haviland, was playing house with Almore and his wife knew it. She had threatened him. I got that from her parents. The girl, Mildred Haviland, knew all about morphine and where to get all of it she needed and how much to use. She was alone in the house with Florence Almore, after she put her to bed. She was in a perfect spot to load a needle with four or five grains and shoot it into an unconscious woman through the same puncture Almore had already made. She would die, perhaps while Almore was still out of the house, and he would come home and find her dead. The problem would be his. He would have to solve it. Nobody would believe anybody else had doped his wife to death. Nobody that didn’t know all the circumstances. But you knew. I’d have to think you much more of a damn fool than I think you are to believe you didn’t know. You covered the girl up. You were in love with her still. You scared her out of town, out of danger, out of reach, but you covered up for her. You let the murder ride. She had you that way. Why did you go up to the mountains looking for her?”
“And how did I know where to look?” he said harshly. “It wouldn’t bother you to add an explanation of that, would it?”
“Not at all,” I said. “She got sick of Bill Chess and his boozing and his tempers and his down-at-heels living. But she had to have money to make a break. She thought she was safe now, that she had something on Almore that was safe to use. So she wrote him for money. He sent you up to talk to her. She didn’t tell Almore what her present name was or any details or where or how she was living. A letter addressed to Mildred Haviland at Puma Point would reach her. All she had to do was ask for it. But no letter came and nobody connected her with Mildred Haviland. All you had was an old photo and your usual bad manners, and they didn’t get you anywhere with those people.”
Degarmo said gratingly: “Who told you she tried to get money from Almore?”
“Nobody. I had to think of something to fit what happened. If Lavery or Mrs. Kingsley had known who Muriel Chess had been, and had tipped it off, you would have known where to find her and what name she was using. You didn’t know those things. Therefore the lead had to come from the only person up there who knew who she was, and that was herself. So I assume she wrote to Almore.”
“Okay,” he said at last. “Let’s forget it. It doesn’t make any difference any more now. If I’m in a jam, that’s my business. I’d do it again, in the same circumstances.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m not planning to put the bite on anybody myself. Not even on you. I’m telling you this mostly so you won’t try to hang any murders on Kingsley that don’t belong on him. If there is one that does, let it hang.”
“Is that why you’re telling me?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“I thought maybe it was because you hated my guts,” he said.
“I’m all done with hating you,” I said. “It’s all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don’t hate them very long.”
We were going through the grape country now, the open sandy grape country along the scarred flanks of the foothills. We came in a little while to San Bernardino and kept on through it without stopping.
37
At Crestline, elevation 5000 feet, it had not yet started to warm up. We stopped for a beer. When we got back into the car, Degarmo took the gun from his underarm holster and looked it over. It was a .38 Smith and Wesson on a .44 frame, a wicked weapon with a kick like a .45 and a much greater effective range.
“You won’t need that,” I said. “He’s big and strong, but he’s not that kind of tough.”
He put the gun back under his arm and grunted. We didn’t talk any more now. We had no more to talk about. We rolled around the curves and along the sharp sheer edges walled with white guard rails and in some places with walls of field stone and heavy iron chains. We climbed through the tall oaks and on to the altitudes where the oaks are not so tall and the pines are taller and taller. We came at last to the dam at the end of Puma Lake.
I stopped the car and the sentry threw his piece across his body and stepped up to the window.
“Close all the windows of your car before proceeding across the dam, please.”
I reached back to wind up the rear window on my side. Degarmo held his shield up. “Forget it, buddy. I’m a police officer,” he said with his usual tact.
The sentry gave him a solid expressionless stare. “Close all windows, please,” he said in the same tone he had used before.
“Nuts to you,” Degarmo said. “Nuts to you, soldier boy.”
“It’s an order.” the sentry said. His jaw muscles bulged very slightly. His dull grayish eyes stared at Degarmo. “And I didn’t write the order, mister. Up with the windows.”
“Suppose I told you to go jump in the lake,” Degarmo sneered.
The sentry said: “I might do it. I scare easily.” He patted the breech of his rifle with a leathery hand.
Degarmo turned and closed the windows on his side. We drove across the dam. There was a sentry in the middle and one at the far end. The first one must have flashed them some kind of signal. They looked at us with steady watchful eyes, without friendliness.
I drove on through the piled masses of granite and down through the meadows of coarse grass. The same gaudy slacks and short shorts and peasant handkerchiefs as the day before yesterday, the same light breeze and golden sun and clear blue sky, the same smell of pine needles, the same cool softness of a mountain summer. But that was a hundred years ago, something crystallized in time, like a fly in amber.