The bay itself was pretty enough, for that barren coast. The campground was something else again, cluttered and trashy. I have the old-fashioned notion that camping is something you do to get away from the crowd, and I could sympathize with the late Edith Henderson for preferring a location away from this outdoor slum.
We spotted the remains of the burned-out rig a short distance back in the dunes, and left the cars at the edge of the solid road, and went in on foot. The fact that Henderson's truck had made it didn't guarantee that our low-clearance passenger vehicles wouldn't bog down in the soft stuff. It had been quite an outfit, I saw; not just one of those little metal cabs you slip onto the ranch pickup after you've finished hauling hay to the horses, but a real traveling cottage mounted permanently on a one-ton chassis.
The interior of the camper unit was pretty well gutted, and the explosion had blown out the roof, door, and windows, and bulged the walls, leaving the blackened bed, stove, and refrigerator, and the half-consumed plywood cabinets, staring at the sky. I walked up thoughtfully and ran my finger along the ribbed aluminum of the side, where it was still bright and shiny. I was aware that Solana had come up beside me. His expression was masked by the large, dark glasses-shades, as we hippies call them.
"What is your opinion, Seсor Helm?"
"Where was the body found?" I asked.
"On the bed." I said, "Those little men from outer space are real ingenious, aren't they?"
"SI, Seсor. That is my thought. What conclusions do you draw?"
"I'm no detective, and if I were, I wouldn't admit it here." I threw a glance towards Carol, busy with her cameras. "To her, I'm just an innocent bystander, an old friend coming along for the ride. At least that's the idea I'm supposed to be selling her."
"I will keep it in mind. As an old friend, do you mind if I ask her to have dinner with me?"
I glanced at him quickly. "You're a fast worker, amigo."
"I haven't asked yet."
"Go ahead," I said. "I'll solace myself with the lady in lavender. If you don't mind."
"Of course not." He smiled. "Tastes differ, Seсor. Personally, I find American women in tight trousers rather unattractive. I merely gave her transportation as a matter of international courtesy."
It was a good joke on Priscilla, after the pains to which she'd gone to render herself seductive, but I kept my face straight, and switched the conversation back to business: "Do you have a medical report on the body?"
"Not yet," Solana said. "The medical facilities here are limited, but I had a specialist flown in. I had a feeling we might need him. He is working on it now. He has instructions to be very thorough. I'm afraid we have not been investigating certain aspects of these phenomena quite as carefully as we should have. Perhaps we have taken too much for granted." He glanced at his watch. "The doctor should be finished by the time we get back to town. I do not think there is anything else for us to learn here. I will see if Mrs. Lujan has all the pictures she wants."
He went over to where Carol was changing film. She looked up and asked him something, and he made a little bow of assent, and posed by the blackened wreckage of the truck while she worked around him with the cameras. Priscilla was wandering around kind of aimlessly, as if she wasn't especially interested in murder from the sky. She came over to me.
"Do you think there's anything significant in the fact that the victims were U.S. tourists, Matt?" she asked. "Remember, the same thing was true in Mazatlбn."
"With the addition of a couple of Mexicans running the fishing boat, who also got clobbered," I said. "Well, maybe it's a clue, but I think there have been plenty of incidents involving only natives. Ask Solana."
"Seсor Solana seems to be busy elsewhere," Priscilla said dryly.
"Sure. He's asking my girlfriend to dinner. He has my permission. I have his permission to ask you to dinner. All the formalities have been complied with. What do you say?"
She was studying me closely. "Are you being clever, Matt?"
"No," I said. "Not very. I'd just like to know what, besides the lady's undeniable charm, makes our moustached friend so eager for her company at just this point in the investigation. Okay?"
Priscilla was frowning. "You sound… you sound as if you weren't quite sure of your snooty blonde. Or Solana either."
I grinned. "The last time I was sure of somebody, really positive beyond a shadow of doubt, it cost me three weeks in the hospital…Well, well. It looks as if the Latin charm is working. I hope you don't mind riding back with me."
She watched Solana guiding Carol towards the Oldsmobile, and said a trifle grimly, "Well, it's obviously either that or walking, isn't it?"
I said, "Incidentally, I don't believe he really pinched your fanny. He says he finds American women in tight pants rather unattractive."
She stuck out her tongue at me, and got into the station wagon. We followed Solana's car back to town. When we arrived at the house doing temporary duty as morgue and laboratory, the doctor had completed his examination and tests. We were allowed to see the body, and it was no treat. We were informed that it was the body of a woman in her late thirties who had burned to death, all right-but only after ingesting enough chloral hydrate to knock out a horse.
While we were assimilating this information, a man came in, rather breathless, and reported to Solana in rapid-fire Spanish that came too quickly and softly for me to follow it. Solana gave him some orders and turned to us, looking grim.
"It seems that Mr. Henderson has disappeared, under circumstances that demand my attention," he said. "Will you be so kind as to escort the ladies to the motel, Mr. Helm?" He turned to Carol. "I am very sorry to have to withdraw my dinner invitation almost as soon as it was given, but you understand and forgive me, I hope."
16
THE RESTAURANT of the Beautiful Beach Motel was a smallish, unpretentious room across the lobby from the bar, with six or eight tables served by a single waitress, a pretty little girl in a fullskirted cotton dress who seemed to love her work. At least, something made her happy enough to sing, and after she'd taken our orders and brought us some beer to drink while we waited, we could hear her out in the kitchen, twittering like a bird.
"But I don't understand!" Carol said abruptly. "What in the world is chloral hydrate, anyway?"
I said, "It's vulgarly known as a Mickey Finn. Knockout drops, to you."
"You mean… you mean Mrs. Henderson was drugged?"
"Uhuh," I said. "The pink polka dot men from Mars are real tricky little fellows. They apparently slid down a ventilator or something, put the lady to sleep, and planted an incendiary bomb to keep her company. Then they were teleported or rematerialized back up to their hovering space ship, the one that looked like half a marble on top of a fifty-cent piece. At least that's what Henderson would like us to believe. Of course he undoubtedly hoped that, in a backward community like this, nobody'd spot the fact that his wife had been fed a chloral cocktail before she was incinerated."
Carol gulped. "What you're saying is that Henderson murdered his wife and made up the flying saucer story to cover up."
"First being careful to get himself mildly scorched to make it look good. That's the general idea."
Priscilla looked bored, as if she'd had all this figured out hours ago. Maybe she had. She asked, "What put you onto it, Matt?"
"Well, the guy himself wasn't too convincing, was he? And the camper had obviously burned from the inside. The outside, in several places at least, was bright and clean. Of course, the hypothetical UFO could have shot an intergalactic napalm missile or something down through the roof, but there wasn't any hole that looked as if it had been made from outside. Everything had blown out, not in."