"Nothing. It's been six or seven years, like I told you."
"How well did you know him back then?"
"Not well, just a few drinks here and there."
"He was pretty good with the women, wasn't he?"
"Oh sure, he always had the women."
"Like who, for instance?"
"A whole string, who knows exactly?"
"Was your sister a good friend of Paige's?"
"What the hell do you mean by that? Listen-"
"Answer the question, Winestock."
"No. No, she hardly knew him."
"You know Russ Dancer, don't you?"
"Yeah, I know him."
"How well did he and Paige get along?"
"All right, I guess."
"I've heard there was once some bad blood between them."
"I don't know anything about that."
"You're sure?"
"I'd tell you if I knew anything, Jesus Christ!"
"Did you ever read anything of Dancer's?"
Winestock wet his lips open-mouthed again. "Like what?"
"You tell me."
"I read a couple of his westerns, yeah."
"How about a book called The Dead and the Dying?"
"I never heard of it," Winestock said immediately. "Why do you want to know about that?"
"Why would Paige have a copy of it?"
"How the hell would I know? Listen, what do you want out of me, huh? I don't know anything about Paige, I don't know anything about a goddamn book. Why don't you leave me alone, a man's got the right to be left alone."
Quartermain watched him steadily for several long, silent seconds; his blue eyes were cold and sharp and calculating. Winestock kept his gaze averted, sweating, fidgeting. Finally Quartermain said, "I guess that's about all for now. But I might want to talk to you again, Winestock. You'll be available, won't you?"
"I'm not going anywhere. I haven't done anything."
"I hope that's true."
"It's true, all right." He wiped the back of his right hand across his damp forehead. "Look, I hope you get whoever killed Walt."
"We'll get him," Quartermain said. "Or her. Nobody is going to get away with murder in Cypress Bay."
Winestock was reaching for the bottle again, jerkily, as we stepped out of the parlor.
When Quartermain and I were sitting in his car on the street outside, he said, "You're probably wondering why I didn't pull him in-and why I didn't talk to the sister."
"Well, you wouldn't have gotten anything out of her. If she knows what it is that's making Winestock sweat, she'll guard hell out of it to protect him."
"Yeah. And as far as pulling Winestock in, his alibi seems okay for the time of Paige's death, at least for now, and I don't have much to hold him on; and I've got the feeling he did as much talking in there as he's going to do for the time being. But he'll sweat more now, wondering if and when we'll be back, and if he sweats long enough and hard enough, it might break this thing open."
"Giving him rope?"
"That's it. He knows that bald man, all right-and he knows more about Walter Paige than he's telling."
"Dancer's book, too," I said. "Did you notice how quick his denials were?"
"I noticed," Quartermain answered grimly.
He pulled away from the curb, and once we were on our way he called Donovan and asked him to contact Lieutenant Favor at his home. When Donovan had done that, and had Favor waiting on standby, Quartermain issued orders for immediate stakeout duty on the Winestock house, saying that we would maintain surveillance on the southwestern corner of Bonificacio and Los Robles until Favor's arrival. Through Donovan, the lieutenant said he would be there within twenty minutes.
We circled the block and parked, and from the corner we could see Winestock's Studebaker and anyone leaving or entering the Winestock house. I could see, too, a thin whitish muggers' moon in the purple-black night sky, and it seemed to have the look of a scythe blade hanging poised over Cypress Bay. Nightmare symbolism, I thought; the hell with that. But I felt uneasy, keyed up-the same feeling you might have if you were standing on ground above a series of earth faults and you knew the faults were there and you could hear a distant rumbling and feel vague tremors beneath your feet. Something was going to happen, you sensed that, you knew the whole thing was going to crack wide open pretty soon now. And when it did, there would be tragedy and pain, and even if you escaped the immediacy of it yourself, the shock waves would reach you and touch you and just maybe they would hurt you a little too…
Thirteen
The faded-blue Studebaker was still sitting dark and empty on the street, and no one had come out of or gone into the Winestock house, when Favor arrived fifteen minutes later. If Brad Winestock was going somewhere tonight, it seemed he was in no hurry about it; either that, or he was being cautious.
Favor pulled up behind us, headlamps dark, and Quartermain got out briefly to talk to him; then he came back and started the car and turned south on Bonificacio. I said, "Where to now?"
He switched on the lights. "To have a talk with the Lomaxes, I think."
We drove out to Cypress Point, and the front gate on Inspiration Way was still open; but when we got down into the tiny valley, the Lomax house was void of lights and sound and the forest-green Mercedes was gone. Old-bronze night lamps were mounted on either side of the front door, and pole lights spaced at intervals encircled the mesh-screened tennis court, but these, too, were unlighted. The only illumination came from the moon, pale and ghostly.
We got out of the car and went up to the door, the way you have to do even though you know it's pointless. Quartermain rang the bell, and chimes tolled emptily through the interior and faded into deep stillness again. We stood there for a couple of minutes, waiting for nothing at all, and then returned to the car.
Quartermain said, "Maybe they're out to dinner, or a movie."
"Maybe so. But why didn't they close the front gate then? Or put on the night-lighting?"
"That doesn't have to mean much."
"Just that they were in a hurry."
"People are always in a hurry," he said. "We'll come back later, or in the morning. They'll be home eventually."
"Do you know them well, Ned?"
"Well enough. I thought I did, anyway."
I had nothing to say to that. I fired another cigarette and coughed out the match and kept on coughing as he swung the car around onto the entrance lane. Too many cigarettes again today-Christ! The moss-laced pine and the rock terracing and the miniature waterfalls had a look of unreality about them in the darkness, as if they were papier-mache imitations on some elaborate stage set. The feeling added depth and fuel to my continuing sense of uneasiness.
When we got to Inspiration Way, I asked, "Now where?"
"Russell Dancer."
"And then?"
"That depends on what Dancer has to say."
We drove down to Highway 1 and turned south. The sea was black and restless under a thin breeze, and the proud old cypress trees silhouetted against the night sky were like manifestations of the essence of loneliness. On the horizon, a mist had begun to form; it drifted slowly landward, vaguely luminous, a little eerie: a nameless something, an other-worldly substance reaching out to embrace the primordial landscape…
The urgent crackling of the transceiver set under the dash snapped me out of that sort of melodramatic reflecting. Quartermain caught up the handset immediately, and it was Lieutenant Favor to tell us Brad Winestock had just left his house and gotten into his car and Was proceeding north on Bonificacio Drive. Favor was maintaining surveillance. Quartermain told him to keep reporting every thirty seconds until Winestock reached an ultimate destination; then he pulled the car into a turnout that came up on our right. He said to me, "Things are beginning to break."