Horror on the ruby x, p.5
Horror on the Ruby X, page 5
Gina sat staring at the magazine without turning a page. There was silence except for the Indian’s weird song until Joel addressed me from under the hat.
“Must be the nuts to be hitched to that good-looking dick?”
“I like it.”
In muffled tones, because of the hat, he gibed, “How come guys want to be detectives?”
“How come you’re a painter?”
“Because I’m a genius. I paint pictures which make everybody happy. But detecting is sly, underhanded work. It only makes people mad and sad. I’m all for the criminal classes myself. I applaud when the crook beats the rap.” He clapped his hands and laughed to himself.
I kept my voice sugary.
“That depends on the crook. And the murder. If an attractive killer removes an unattractive character from this earth I also look the other way. But my husband is far less personal than I am. He is not swayed by sentiment. And he always gets his man.”
Joel sat up and took off the hat. Gina’s eyes were sharp. Cousin Ada rested her knitting. Tom Smith sang.
“You referring to me?” Joel asked, nastily.
“If the shoe fits, Mr. Genius.”
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
“Right always prevails,” said Cousin Ada.
“Stop it!” Gina screamed. She beat the magazine with little fists. “I can’t stand any more. I won’t put up with this persecution. Tom, go for Alan and David and tell them they’ve got to throw these dreadful people out. I’ll go mad if I have to endure them one more minute.”
The Indian laid down his drum, but before he could leave the room Alan, David, Patrick and the sheriff came in from the dining room.
“Anybody like a drink?” David asked, hospitably.
“No!” Gina screamed again. “Put these people out, Alan. Coming here in the middle of the night …”
“It’s only just past nine, dear,” Alan said.
“How about handing me a beer?” Joel Chapman asked.
“There’s no beer in this bar,” Alan said, brusquely. “Go and get it from the icebox in the kitchen. I’m sorry, Gina, but the sooner you let Jim Trask get on with what he has to do, the sooner it will be over. This isn’t a social visit. The Abbotts had an accident on their way to town. The wrecker came for the car. It had been deliberately damaged and it’s a miracle that they made it down the hill and across the bridge.”
“Probably some cheap old crate. Why should we be dragged into it?” Gina barked.
Joel stood up and stretched and started out of the room.
“Stay here, Chapman!” Trask ordered him.
“Go fly a kite!” Joel replied.
The sheriff rumbled.
“That’ll be enough of that! You sit down, hear?”
“Well, why include me?” Joel muttered. “I had nothing to do with any of it.”
He dropped down on the sofa and slid down on his spine and pulled the hat again over his face.
“Look here, Joel!” David said. “You’ve got to behave yourself or I’ll take a sock at you myself. I don’t know why my mother puts up with you.”
“She puts up with me because she wants the money my pictures will bring. Didn’t you know?”
David took a dive for Joel and I regretted that the sheriff’s long arm grabbed David. “I’ll handle this. One more word from you, Chapman, and I’ll arrest you for obstructing an investigation for murder. We’ve got a dandy hoosegow in our town. Just one room. I reckon you might enjoy getting real chummy with the town drunks. Think so? Now you sit up the way decent folks do and take that look off your face and that hat off your head. When I want to hear from you, I’ll say so.”
Joel sat up meekly and laid the hat beside him. Trask laid his Stetson on the table and walked to the fireplace, saying excuse me when he had to pass between Gina and the fire. He took out the makings and started a cigarette. Everybody including Gina now waited in polite silence. “There’s been too many Mackenzie car accidents. Admitting the hill is dangerous, it’s a funny thing that nobody has accidents there but people from this ranch or those who have been here. Ma’am,” he said to Gina, after licking the paper to secure the tobacco, and dropping the little tobacco bag in the pocket of his jacket. “For your information the Abbotts’ station wagon is brand-new. It’s not a Cadillac, ma’am, but it’s no old crate. It’s a Buick.” He struck a kitchen match and lit the cigarette. “Luckily it landed without turning over, and its underside was not hurt by the stones it landed on. It had been deliberately worked on to cause a wreck. The natural place for such a wreck would be on that hill on account of the strain on the car from those sharp turns. But it made it past the bridge. The car has been hauled into town and we have witnesses who are mechanics and can prove exactly what was done to damage the car.” There wasn’t a sound, a sigh even. “Okay for that, for the moment. How many of you were here at the time Ruby Mackenzie was killed?”
People looked from one to another until David said, “All of us, Jim. Except Miss Brent. And Tom Smith.”
Trask addressed the Navajo. “You take all the care of the cars, don’t you, Tom?”
The Indian stood up. Diminutive compared to Trask, he was still not small-looking because of his lithe, proportioned build.
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s not so!” Cousin Ada announced. “Refugio was my mechanic and he was a good honest man, but I always stood by and watched him when he was working on my car. I know all about cars. And after Refugio checked my car I had it checked again in town. I don’t trust any of them, but at least Refugio was a Christian.” Her bright eyes pilloried Tom Smith.
Trask took a couple of puffs and asked, “Who checked the station wagon Refugio was killed in?”
“I did, sir,” the Indian answered. “I take care of all of Mrs. Mackenzie’s own cars.”
“When did you check it last?”
“Yesterday. I put it on the hoist to mend a broken brakes cable. Then I tightened the steering and checked everything and greased it, sir.”
“What broke that cable?”
The light voice did not change.
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe somebody drove over a big rock.”
Trask pretended to accept that. He asked, “Where was the car from the time you fixed it till Refugio went off in it?”
“In the garage, sir.”
“Did Refugio take it out himself?”
“No, sir. Alan took it out. Laurie—Miss Brent—was going to drive it to town.”
“I see. Could anyone get at the car in the garage without being seen?”
“Yes, sir. We only lock up at night.”
“Did you see anybody hanging about there?”
“No, sir.”
The man’s face was graven as a copper image. His blue eyes met the sheriff’s steadily. Mechanic. Chauffeur. Troubadour. And ornamental beyond words, with his exquisite features, thick shining black hair, his superbly suitable clothing, his jewelry in impeccable taste. He made everybody in the room, even Lauren Brent, look ordinary.
And he was also entirely mysterious and secretive. Whatever he knew, I thought, he would never, never tell.
“I’m going out to the garages to see if we can find the tools used to damage these cars,” Trask said. “I understand you have a full set of keys, ma’am. I’ll thank you for them, please.”
Gina glared at Trask. In exasperation she asked, “Where did you put them, Laurie?”
“In the desk in my room. Where you said.”
“Will you permit my secretary to leave the room?” Gina asked, with vitriol in her voice.
Trask nodded. Lauren rose and left the room. She, too, wore moccasins and we heard no footsteps as she walked along the hall which led back from the front door. We heard her open a door and the flick of a light switch.
Then she screamed. One blood-curdling scream followed another.
Chapter Six
Tom Smith sprinted ahead of everybody even though taking time to grab up a walking stick from the jar near the front door. He darted into Lauren’s room well ahead of me, but I was there in time to see him fling the paralyzed girl to one side and take her place.
A big rattlesnake was coiled on the hearth of her fireplace. Its hideous head rose high above the sickening coil and waved hideously, as if keeping time to the whir of its vibrating tail.
It struck. It hurled its full length at Tom Smith. He stepped deftly aside. Before it coiled again he touched the back of its head lightly with the stick. Instantly the snake relaxed and lay supine and, moving with demonic facility, the Navajo picked up the reptile below its head and flung it out an open window near the fireplace.
He closed the window. Nobody spoke for a moment and then there was a blur of amazed gasps and praise. Lauren, trembling and weak from shock, leaned on David’s shoulder.
The Navajo took out a white handkerchief, wrapped it around the hand which had touched the snake, and tried to slip past the group blocking the door. Trask barred his exit.
“How marvelous!” I cried.
“I say!” Patrick exclaimed.
Gina, arriving too late, asked, “What happened?”
Alan said, “Tom picked up a live rattler and threw it out that window.”
David patted Lauren’s hair.
“There, there,” he crooned. “It’s all right. Don’t worry, now.”
Gina’s eyes blazed.
“Seems to me that Laurie can stand on her own feet, David. She’s a big girl.”
Lauren pulled away, swayed, and Patrick caught her arm and held it as Tom Smith once again tried to leave the room. Trask stopped him.
David asked, “Why didn’t you kill it, Tom?”
“It brings snake sickness to The People if they touch a snake.”
“That’s what they believe,” Trask said. “A Navajo will never kill a snake if he can avoid it. Thinks it makes them sick.”
Tom nodded agreement. He glanced at the window as if he might take leave that way.
Gina saw the wrapped hand and shrieked, “Did it bite you?”
“No, Gina. And there is another thing you should know. If a snake is killed in a house, someone in that house will die. I did not want anyone to die.”
Trask said, “Anyhow it’s gone. But how did it get in?”
“I must go, sir. I must clean my hand with medicine herbs because even if a Navajo only touches a snake he might get snake sickness.”
“Where’s his room?” Trask asked Alan.
“Over the garage. He keeps all kinds of Indian medicine herbs in his bathroom. Let him go, Jim. I’ll go with him, if you like.”
“We’d better see if there’s another rattler in the room,” Patrick said. “They sometimes travel in pairs.”
“There’s no other,” Tom said.
“How do you know?” Trask demanded, suspiciously.
“There is no longer a snake smell, sir.”
The sheriff’s keen eyes narrowed on the Indian.
“How come you thought to pick up that walking stick?”
Tom drew himself up and said with hauteur, omitting the sir, “I could hear the snake.”
“All the way from the living room?” I asked.
Tom Smith nodded stiffly. His eyes were slits of hard light.
“Some ears!” Trask grunted. “Tom, that’s a Hopi Indian trick. Picking up a snake like that. That’s how they collect snakes for their famous snake dance.” Tom nodded stiffly. “But this is the first time I ever heard of a Navajo handling a snake. Your reservation crawls with rattlers but you’re too superstitious to kill them. I don’t get it. Where did you learn that trick?”
Tom said, in cold anger, “If a snake comes into the hogan you have to throw him out. I must go. If herbs are not put on at once, I’ll have to go home to the medicine man.”
“For heaven’s sake let him go use his herbs,” Gina cried. “We can’t spare him now that Refugio is gone. Let him go!”
Trask nodded for Alan to accompany Tom Smith. With high-headed pride the Indian left the room, Alan behind him.
“I would have fallen down dead, Laurie,” I said, then.
Her voice shook as she said, “I was too scared to move. I’d snapped on the lights and was halfway across the room before I saw it.”
“Anyway, it gave you a chance to lean on a man,” Gina said. Lauren’s face became a mask. David frowned at his mother and shook his head.
“She’s welcome to lean on Patrick,” I said. “If I’d had that deal I’d be leaning on every man here, Mrs. Mackenzie.”
“How come that window was open?” Trask asked.
“I left it open,” Lauren said. “It never occurred to me that anything could crawl inside it.”
“The sill’s pretty close to the ground,” Trask said, “but it’s too cold for snakes to be crawling about at this time of year. Specially at night. That snake should have been in a hole in the ground or under a rock hours before dark. Maybe it’s been in here for hours. Maybe the fire attracted it. Well, let’s search the room just in case there’s another one some place.”
“Tom would know,” Gina stated. “If he says there’s no other, it’s true.”
“Well, I hate to hurt his feelings,” Trask informed her, “but just to be on the safe side I’d be glad if Pat and David helped me make sure. You ladies better leave, though.”
As a parting thrust Gina said, “Laurie probably put the thing here herself. There are all kinds of ways of getting a man.”
We left, Lauren with me, and when we got to the living room Gina asked Gloria to come with her to her own sitting room. She flounced out and Gloria trailed her. I got a drink for Lauren and one for myself. She was so upset that she confided in me.
“That woman is horrible. Once, I worshipped her. I was working in a beauty department on Fifth Avenue, selling at the cosmetics counter. I was wondering if I would ever get together enough money to finish college. Then Gina Mackenzie, a perfect stranger, walked in. We chatted awhile, and she offered money to help me finish college. When I insisted on repaying her, she gave me a job as personal secretary, to begin after graduation. She said I could repay her out of my salary.
“I said that I’d accept,” Lauren continued, “if we could make an agreement, which I would sign. I honestly didn’t think I’d see her again. It was so madly crazy! But next day she came in with a proper agreement and I signed and she gave me more money than I needed. She said I must buy some good clothes because she’d be taking me about here and there. So I spent some of the extra money for clothes, though I didn’t need them. The agreement said I was to come to her after I graduated, to be her secretary, and in that way I could repay her. After she left New York I didn’t see her again until I came here, but she’d write now and then.
“When I got here, I still had a little money and she made me go into Santa Maria and buy these squaw dresses and the silver belt to wear with them. She said I must wear clothes like this out here. She was angry because I wouldn’t buy grand dresses with gold braid and stuff like the one Gloria Wyatt’s wearing tonight, but those cost a hundred and fifty dollars and I got three dresses and the silver belt, which cost a hundred and twenty-five, for two hundred. It was all the money I had…. Oh, I shouldn’t tell you this, but when I arrived here, so excited and happy, so eager to see her again and thank her, she called me immediately into the living room and before I even went to my room she informed me that neither of her sons was eligible. She said that David was a stinker who would lead me on and drop me and that Alan had been accused of murdering his wife. I replied that that wasn’t true, of course, and she said in the most indifferent way that she really didn’t know, that she never had understood her son Alan.”
“How awful! I don’t believe he did it. She said it to put you off Alan.”
Lauren sighed.
“Alan’s strange. I can’t see him without thinking about it. Surely no mother would say such a thing if she didn’t believe it.”
I couldn’t answer that honestly because always in my own mind there hovered my suspicion of Alan. Now I was sure that Patrick felt it, too. Alan had followed us too quickly in his jeep. Trask still liked and trusted him, but Trask was simple and straightforward. He always said that psychology was out of his line. A thief was a thief, a murderer a murderer, undeserving of pity or lenience.
“She doesn’t need a secretary,” Lauren said. “David does everything that I supposed I would do.”
“I wonder what happened to Joel?” I said, in a moment, missing him for the first time. “And Cousin Ada?”
“Joel probably took his chance to run away from the sheriff. Joel hates any kind of authority. Cousin Ada’s another one of the same kind, in a different way. She’s a law unto herself. But she’s good, really good.”
“Laurie, as I said, it’s just possible that Gina said what she did about Alan to put you off him. I’ll bet she doesn’t want him to marry again.”
“How stupid! But why should she imagine I’d want either of them?”
“There are people who try to own other people. I’ll bet she’s one.”
Lauren was calming down. She finished her whiskey and refused more.
“I do know she wants David to marry Gloria Wyatt because she has a lot of money. Gloria would be willing, I think. She tries for all the men like crazy.”
“David likes you, Laurie.”
“I like him. You’d have an awful time with her if she knew it. You heard what she said when he was propping me up, there in my room. But Joel was holding Gloria’s hand on the sofa and Gina didn’t interfere. Why not? If she invited Gloria here specially for David?”
I had an idea about that, too. “I don’t know why she puts up with Joel Chapman at all, unless he’s got something on her. If so, he could pull his ridiculous antics as a kind of blackmail. He could hold Gloria’s hand to annoy Gina. Maybe he wants his pictures for himself. Maybe if he keeps on insulting her and she thinks he might talk and reveal some skeleton in her closet, she might give them to him to get rid of him. They say he paints very well.”
“He paints marvelously. When I get over my snake scare you must come to my room. The walls are full of his pictures and they’re dreamy.”
