“How could you be? You don’t even know her.”
“No. But I haven’t entirely given up hope of that.”
“Then you don’t think it’s her car they found?”
“We’d better wait and see. How far is it to Medicine Stone?”
“Just about a hundred miles from my driveway.”
The trees increased in size as we climbed into the hills. The road became a tunnel cut by my headlight beams out of branching darkness, which closed behind us. Trevor said after a while:
“This killing you say you walked in on – is it connected with Phoebe in any way?”
“In several ways. Through her mother, for one. I’d give a good deal to talk to Catherine Wycherly again.”
“I thought you were going to have her looked for.”
“Willie Mackey refused to take the assignment.”
“Why?”
“He’s too busy,” I said diplomatically. “Then other things came up. A lot of other things came up. I’ll get back to the problem of having her looked for tomorrow.”
He turned towards me heavily. I could feel his straining eyes almost palpable on my face:
“You think Catherine killed Ben Merriman, don’t you?”
“And possibly Stanley Quillan, the record-shop proprietor.”
“I can’t believe it. What motive would she have?”
“They took her for her money. Merriman used his brother-in-law Quillan to buy the Mandeville house for less money than it was worth. They turned around and sold it to Catherine Wycherly for more money than it was worth.”
“You don’t commit murder because somebody cheats you in a real-estate deal.”
“It wasn’t just a real-estate deal. Merriman sold the house again the other day and forced Mrs. Wycherly to give him most of the money she got for it.”
“How could he force her to do that?”
“The obvious answer is blackmail.”
“Blackmail for what?”
“I only know what people tell me. I talked to a man in San Mateo today – manager of an apartment house called the Conquistador. Phoebe stayed there for some days after her disappearance, in an apartment which her mother had leased. Quillan lived in the apartment next door. He had Phoebe’s bedroom bugged. I don’t pretend to understand the situation, but it wasn’t a good one. The manager, Girston, told me further that Phoebe left the Conquistador in Merriman’s company.”
“Where did they go?”
“Apparently she was on her way to see her mother in Sacramento. She never got there, if Catherine Wycherly can be believed; which I doubt.”
“All of this is new to me,” Trevor said thoughtfully. “At least it means that Phoebe has been seen alive since November second.”
“I have several witnesses to that.”
“You think she’s been killed since then?”
“We’d better let the evidence tell us, when we get to it.”
That held Trevor, as it was intended to. We had begun the long descent from the ridge. The trees fell away; the darkness opened; the sea spread out before us, paved down the middle with broken moonlight. We drove south on the coastal highway for over an hour, between bare fields and deserted beaches, through redwood forest that blotted out the sky, along rising bluffs. On our right the moon slid up the darkness, trailing its broken silver on the surface of the ocean.
Trevor glanced at the water every now and then. “I can’t believe she’s in there,” he said once, but he was shivering.
Medicine Stone was a wide place in the highway among the redwoods. It seemed to be largely composed of tourist lodges faced with unpeeled logs. Its main building was a combination of general store, gas station, motel, post office, and coffee shop. The coffee shop spilled light through its front window. Someone had scrawled in soap on the glass: Breakfast Twenty-four Hours. Above it a red neon sign, incongruous with the surrounding trees, bore the name Gayley.
Trevor and I went in. The little cafe was empty, but I heard the slop and clatter of dishwashing in a back room. I rapped with a quarter on the formica counter. An old man came out of the back room wiping his hands on the front of his long white apron.
“Sorry, gemmen,” he said around ill-fitting false teeth, “I can’t serve you. Mrs. Gayley’s cook, and she ain’t here. Nobody’s here ’ceptin’ me, and they don’t let me cook. Account of I ain’t been checked by the County Health.” The spiderwebs of senility dimmed his eyes and drew his mouth into a one-sided grin.
Trevor said: “Where is everybody?”
“Down at the beach. They’re trying to bring up a car that went over the cliff. That’s what they get for racing around in their roadsters. Bang. Kerplash.”
“Can you tell us where the place is?” Trevor said impatiently.
“Let’s see. You headed south?”
“South.”
“Then it’s the second turn on your right, about two miles down the road. Just follow it all the way. Only not too far all the way.” He guffawed. His false teeth slipped down and lent him a ghastly look, like a laughing skull.
“Did the car go over at Painted Cove?”
“That’s right. Take the road to Painted Cove. You know these parts?”
“I have a summer cottage about halfway between here and Terranova.”
“Thought I reckernized your physog.”
I gave the old man the quarter, and we drove down the highway. The road to Painted Cove was rutted dirt eked out here and there with gravel. It wound interminably through redwood forest. The trees hung over us like pyramids held up by rough brown columns. Then there were lights beyond them.
The road unwound onto a mesa which broke off suddenly in a sheer sea cliff. A heavy tow truck had been backed to its edge. Several cars, official and unofficial, were parked near it, and twelve or fifteen people were standing rather aimlessly around. The crane on the back of the big truck stuck out over the cliff edge like a gallows, with a cable hanging from it.
We walked towards it across the uneven ground. The truck had the legend, Gayley’s Garage, painted on the door of the cab. The only active man in sight was a uniformed deputy handling a searchlight on the rear end of the truckbed. Its beam fell down the basalt face of the cliff and shone on the moving water thirty-five or forty feet below. A black head like a seal’s broke the surface; I caught the gleam of a diving mask. The diver submerged again.
Trevor reached up and touched the deputy’s leg. “Did you get the car out, officer?”
The man turned on him fiercely. “You “don’t see it, do you? Stand back from the edge.”
Trevor stepped back, and almost lost his balance. I took his arm. Muscles were like straining wood; a steady tremor ran through them under my fingers. I tried to pull him away. He wouldn’t budge. He stood sighting down the cable at the water, trying to penetrate its black-and-silver surface.
A broad old man came up to us. He had a face like carved redwood burl under his wide-brimmed hat.
“Mr. Trevor!”
He offered Trevor his hand, and after a moment of complete blankness Trevor took it: “How are you, Sheriff?”
“Tolerably well. I’m sorry to drag you away from home on an errand like this.”
“It can’t be helped. You didn’t get the car out?”
“Not yet. It’s wedged between two boulders and filled with sand. I’m commencing to think it’ll take a sky-hook to yank her.”
“Is there anyone in it?”
“There was.”
“What do you mean, there was?”
“We got her out of there and brought her up a couple hours ago.” He glanced down at the sea as if it was his personal enemy. “What was left of her.”
“My niece?”
“It sure looks like it, Mr. Trevor. It’s her car, and she was in it. I never knew the little lady myself.”
Trevor thrust his peaked face towards him. “Where is she?”